Word learning depends on attention -- children must focus on the right things at the right times. However, autistic children often display restricted interests, limiting their intake of stimuli during word learning. This study investigates how category interests influence word learning in autism and neurotypical development. Autistic and…

Concurrent learning of adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies has been shown in adults only. This study extended this line of research by examining dependency-specific learning for both adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies concurrently in both adults and children. Seventy adults aged 18 to 64 (40 women, 30 men; Experiment 1) and 64 children aged…

Several studies have been published on disengaged test respondents, and others have analyzed disengaged survey respondents separately. For many large-scale assessments, students answer questionnaire and test items in succession. This study examines the percentage of students who continuously engage in disengaged responding behaviors across…

Purpose: Adults recognize words that are acquired during childhood more quickly than words acquired during adulthood. This is known as the Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect. The AoA effect, according to the integrated account, manifests in tasks necessitating greater semantic processing and in tasks with arbitrary input-output mapping. Compound…

The compound Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a classic measure of creativity. Participants are shown three cue words (sore-shoulder-sweat) and asked to generate a word that connects them (cold). Theoretical views of RAT performance differ in the degree to which they conceptualize performance as depending on automatic spreading activation across…

While most research on scalar implicature has focused on the lexical scale "some" vs "all," here we investigated an understudied scale formed by two syntactic constructions: categorizations (e.g., "Wilma is a nurse") and comparisons ("Wilma is like a nurse"). An experimental study by Rubio-Fernandez et al.…

In recent years, NHS Ambulance Trusts throughout the UK have consistently failed to achieve their response time targets for both actual and potential life-threatening calls. To avoid a media and public outcry, the NHS response has been to change the basic parameters upon which the response time targets are calculated. An action learning study,…

Word knowledge and the speed of word processing in monolingual children and adults are influenced by word properties, such as the age of acquisition (AoA), imageability, and frequency. Understanding how different properties of words contribute to the ease of processing by bilingual children is a critical step for establishing models of childhood…

We investigated the mechanisms underlying sandwich priming, a procedure in which a brief preprime target presentation precedes the conventional mask-prime-target sequence, used to study orthographic similarity. Lupker and Davis (2009) showed the sandwich paradigm enhances orthographic priming effects: With primes moderately related to targets,…

Semantic ambiguity has been shown to slow comprehension, although it is unclear whether this ambiguity disadvantage is attributable to competition in semantic activation or difficulties in response selection. We tested the two accounts by examining semantic relatedness decisions to homonyms, or words with multiple unrelated meanings (e.g.,…

English language programmes provide established pathways for international students seeking university admission in countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom. In order to refer international applicants to appropriate levels and durations of English language support prior to matriculation into their main course of study, pathway providers…

In this study, we investigated how empirical indicators of test-taking engagement can be defined, empirically validated, and used to describe group differences in the context of the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC). The approach was to distinguish between disengaged and engaged response behavior by means of…

Performing a cognitive task while maintaining upright stance can lead to increased or reduced body sway depending on tasks and experimental conditions. Because greater sway is commonly taken to indicate loosened postural control, and vice versa, the precise impact of cognitive load on postural stability has remained unclear. In much of the large…

Perceptual simulations are unconscious and automatic, whereas perceptual imagery is conscious and deliberate, but it is unclear how easily one can transfer perceptual information from unconscious to conscious awareness. We investigated whether it is possible to be aware of what one is mentally representing; that is, whether it is possible to…

Eye gaze is a powerful directional cue that automatically evokes joint attention states. Even when faces are ignored, there is incidental learning of the reliability of the gaze cueing of another person, such that people who look away from targets are judged less trustworthy. In a series of experiments, we demonstrated further properties of the…