A framework for action planning, called "ideomotor theory," suggests that actions are represented by their perceivable effects. Thus, any activation of the effect image, either endogenously or exogenously, will trigger the corresponding action. We review contemporary studies relating to ideomotor theory in which researchers have investigated…

Deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) represent an intriguing opportunity to study neurocognitive plasticity and reorganization when sound is introduced following a period of auditory deprivation early in development. Although it is common to consider deafness as affecting hearing alone, it may be the case that auditory deprivation leads to…

We investigated procedural learning in 18 children with basal ganglia (BG) lesions or dysfunctions of various aetiologies, using a visuo-motor learning test, the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task, and a cognitive learning test, the Probabilistic Classification Learning (PCL) task. We compared patients with early (less than 1 year old, n=9), later…

The behavioural phenotype of velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS), one of the most common human multiple anomaly syndromes, includes developmental disabilities, frequently including intellectual disability (ID) and high risk of diagnosis of psychotic disorders including schizophrenia. VCFS may offer a model of the relationship between ID and risk of…

The hypothesis that performance on implicit learning tasks is unrelated to psychometric intelligence was examined in a sample of 605 German pupils. Performance in artificial grammar learning, process control, and serial learning did not correlate with various measures of intelligence when participants were given standard implicit instructions.…

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the effects of to-be-remembered (TBR) and intervening list length on free recall to determine whether selective rehearsal could explain the previous finding that recall was affected only by TBR list length. In Experiments 1 (covert rehearsal) and 2 (overt rehearsal), participants saw 5- and 20-word lists…

The present research examined self-reported rehearsal processes in naturalistic time-based prospective memory tasks (Study 1 and 2) and compared them with the processes in event-based tasks (Study 3). Participants had to remember to phone the experimenter either at a prearranged time (a time-based task) or after receiving a certain text message…

The authors report 2 experiments that compare the serial recall of pure lists of long words, pure lists of short words, and lists of long or short words containing just a single isolated word of a different length. In both experiments for pure lists, there was a substantial recall advantage for short words; the isolated words were recalled better…

This article presents an extended version of the convolution-correlation memory model TODAM (theory of distributed associative memory) that eliminates some inadequacies of previous versions and provides a unified treatment of item, associative, and serial-order information. TODAM2 extends the chunking model to provide a general model for episodic…

Variations of backward chaining--backward chaining with leap-aheads (BCLA) and reverse chaining with leap-aheads (RCLA)-- were compared with four severely retarded learners (17-32 years) who were trained on two complex vocational tasks. Learning rate for the BCLA procedure was superior to the RCLA procedure. Time to criterion differences were…

In 5 experiments, a Hebb repetition effect, that is, improved immediate serial recall of an (unannounced) repeating list, was demonstrated in the immediate serial recall of visual materials, even when use of phonological short-term memory was blocked by concurrent articulation. The learning of a repeatedly presented letter list in one modality…

Many studies have analysed how goal directed movements are corrected in response to changes in the properties of the target. However, only simple movements to single targets have been used in those studies, so little is known about movement corrections under more complex situations. Evidence from studies that ask for movements to several targets…

An associative model of serial learning is described based on the assumption that the effective stimulus for a serial-list item is generated by adaptation-level coding of the item's ordinal position. How the model can generate predictions of aspects of serial-learning data is illustrated. (SLD)

This study tested four complementary hypotheses to characterize intrinsic and extrinsic influences on the order with which preschool children learn the names of individual alphabet letters. The hypotheses included: (a) "own-name advantage," which states that children learn those letters earlier which occur in their own names, (b) the…