Like adults, infants use working memory to represent occluded objects and can update these memory representations to reflect changes to a scene that unfold over time. Here we tested the limits of infants' ability to update object representations in working memory. Eleven-month-old infants participated in a modified foraging task in which they saw…

The author reviews research on working memory and short-term memory abilities of deaf individuals, delineating strengths and weaknesses. Among the areas of weakness that are reviewed are sequential recall, processing speed, attention, and memory load. Areas of strengths include free recall, visuospatial recall, imagery, and dual encoding.…

The present study adopted a cognitive linguistic framework--Talmy's (1985, 1991, 2000) typological classification of motion events--to investigate how second-language (L2) Chinese learners come to express motion events in a targetlike manner. Fifty-five U.S. university students and 20 native speakers of Chinese participated in the study. A…

This study determined the working memory (WM) components (executive, phonological loop, and visual-spatial sketchpad) that best predicted mathematical word problem-solving accuracy of elementary school children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (N = 310). A battery of tests was administered to assess problem-solving accuracy, problem-solving processes, WM,…

Many studies of cognition and perception use a visual mask to explore the dynamics of information processing of a target. Especially important in these applications is the time between the target and mask stimuli. A plot of some measure of target visibility against stimulus onset asynchrony is called a masking function, which can sometimes be…

We report a study that examines whether the presentation of irrelevant, ordinal information at central fixation interacts with the allocation of attention beyond fixation. Previous research has demonstrated that number perception influences the allocation of spatial attention, such that the presentation of a spatially nonpredictive number at…

The spatial component of numerical and ordinal information has been explored in previous research. However, how such mapping emerges and how it is affected by the learning experience are issues still under debate. In the current study, we examined the orientation of the mental number line for different numerical notations in Chinese readers. Our…

McCrink (McCrink, Dehaene, & Dehaene-Lambertz (2007). "Moving along the number line: Operational momentum in nonsymbolic arithmetic." "Perception and Psychophysics," 69(8), 1324-1333) documented an "Operational Momentum" (OM) effect--overestimation of addition and underestimation of subtraction outcomes in non-symbolic (dot pattern) arithmetic. We…

Researchers are increasingly aware of the role of spatial skills in preparing children for future mathematics achievement (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008). In addition, sex differences have been consistently documented showing boys score higher than girls in assessments of spatial ability, particularly mental rotation (Linn &…

Background: The present study was aimed at investigating working memory (WM) and executive functions capacities in individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) as compared with mental-age matched typically developing (TD) children. Method: In order to serve the study goal, a sizeable battery of tasks tapping WM as well as attention, memory, planning,…

Background: Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit lifelong abnormalities in the adaptive allocation of visual attention. The ubiquitous nature of attentional impairments in ASD has led some authors to hypothesize that atypical attentional modulation may be a factor in the development of higher-level sociocommunicative…

The present study aims to investigate and compare the behavioral performance and event-related potentials (ERPs) measures in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and typically developing (TD) children when performing the visuospatial attention task with reflexive orienting. Thirty children with DCD and 30 TD children were…

Object-location memory is an important form of spatial memory, comprising different subcomponents that each process specific types of information within memory, i.e. remembering objects, remembering positions and binding these features in memory. In the current study we investigated the neural correlates of binding categorical (relative) or…

Oscillatory synchrony in the gamma band (30-120 Hz) has been involved in various cognitive functions including conscious perception and learning. Explicit memory encoding, in particular, relies on enhanced gamma oscillations. Does this finding extend to unconscious memory encoding? Can we dissociate gamma oscillations related to unconscious…

When turning without vision or audition, people tend to perceive their locomotion as a change in heading relative to objects in the remembered surroundings. Such perception of self-rotation depends on sensitivity to information for movement from biomechanical activity of the locomotor system or from inertial activation of the vestibular and…