Selective attention is the ability to focus on goal-relevant information while filtering out irrelevant information. This work examined the development of selective attention to natural scenes and objects with a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. Children (N = 69, ages 4-6 years) and adults (N = 80) were asked to attend to either objects…

Acting upon target stimuli from the environment becomes faster when the targets are preceded by a warning (alerting) cue. Accordingly, alerting is often used to support action in safety-critical contexts (e.g., honking to alert others of a traffic situation). Crucially, however, the benefits of alerting for action have been established using…

This research aims to examine the relationship between high school students' reading habits and their smartphone addiction level. The sample consisted of 512 high school students studying in various private schools located in Turkish cities of Istanbul and Edirne. High school students were included in the study using the convenience sampling…

Task-unrelated thought (TUT) occurs frequently in our daily lives and across a range of tasks, but we know little about how this phenomenon arises during and influences the way we communicate. Conversations also provide a novel opportunity to assess the alignment (or divergence) in TUT during dyadic interactions. We conducted a study to determine:…

Self-regulation often refers to the executive influence of cognitive resources to alter prepotent responses. The ability to engage cognitive resources as a form of executive process emerges and improves in the preschool-age years while the dominance of prepotent responses, such as emotional reactions, begins to decline from toddlerhood onward.…

Developmental science has increasingly scrutinized how environmental hazards influence child outcomes, but few studies examine how contaminants affect disparities in early skill formation. Linking research on environmental inequality and early childhood development, this study assessed whether differences in exposure to neurotoxic lead explain…

The current study analysed crashes identified in a large-scale naturalistic driving database to assess the prevalence of cognitive disengagement (i.e., purely cognitive distraction and mind wandering/microsleep) or episodes wherein the driver did not look away from the roadway during secondary task completion or wherein another clearly observable…

This study aims to advance our understanding of the nature and source(s) of individual differences in pragmatic language behavior over the adult lifespan. Across four story continuation experiments, we probed adults' (N = 496 participants, ages 18-82) choice of referential forms (i.e., names vs. pronouns to refer to the main character). Our…

Partially autonomous vehicles can help minimize human errors. However, being free from some driving subtasks can result in a low vigilance state, which can affect the driver's attention towards the road. The present study first tested whether drivers of partially autonomous vehicles would benefit from the addition of auditory versions of the…

We examined college instructors' perceptions of student use of mobile technology for off-task purposes during class. Previous research demonstrated that digital distraction hinders student learning, yet little is known about instructor views and reactions to this behavior. Phenomenological interviews with 11 college instructors revealed that…

Despite decades of robust evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of self-monitoring for attention, the strategy is not universally taught to students who struggle with attention, particularly within general education settings. Recent studies have included technology such as tablets or smartphones, adding to the ease and social acceptability of…

This study presents an overview of the literature of mindfulness in education, which is based on the definition of mindfulness, and accompanying key terms, and the philosophy and practices it involves. The review includes a survey of Buddhism, Eastern and Western mindfulness traditions. This literature review gathers the thinking of scholars on…

The ability to shield against distraction while focusing on a task requires the operation of executive functions and is essential for successful learning. We investigated the short-term dynamics of distraction control in a data set of 269 children aged 4-10 years and 51 adults pooled from three studies using multilevel models. Participants…

The ability to communicate effectively is a crucial aspect of education. For college students, learning how to speak in public is essential for their academic and professional future. However, many students report fear of speaking in public, the so-called Public Speaking Anxiety (PSA). This study aims to implement a training program using Virtual…

Purpose: The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study is to determine the impact of prerequisite course type on student final quantitative research methods final grade after controlling for mathematics anxiety, statistics anxiety, and task presentation/performance. The additional purpose is to determine if there are significant…