To talk about space, spoken languages rely on arbitrary and categorical forms (e.g., left, right). In sign languages, however, the visual-spatial modality allows for iconic encodings (motivated form-meaning mappings) of space in which form and location of the hands bear resemblance to the objects and spatial relations depicted. We assessed whether…

Response control or inhibition is one of the cornerstones of modern cognitive psychology, featuring prominently in theories of executive functioning and impulsive behavior. However, repeated failures to observe correlations between commonly applied tasks have led some theorists to question whether common response conflict processes even exist. A…

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to a set of competencies to process, understand, and reason with affective information. Recent studies suggest ability measures of experiential and strategic EI differentially predict performance on non-emotional and emotionally laden tasks. To explore cognitive processes underlying these abilities further, we…

Cognitive control describes the ability to use internal goals to strategically guide how we process and respond to our environment. Changes in the environment lead to adaptation in control strategies. This type of control learning can be observed in performance adjustments in response to varying proportions of easy to hard trials over blocks of…

Existing approaches in the literature on cognitive control in conflict tasks almost exclusively target the outcome of control (by comparing mean congruency effects) and not the processes that shape control. These approaches are limited in addressing a current theoretical issue--what contribution does learning make to adjustments in cognitive…

The More A-More B intuitive rule has become a research hotspot in the field of mathematical education in recent years. The intuitive rule of More A-More B is often reflected in students' responses to comparison tasks. In such tasks, students are asked to compare 2 objects that differ in a certain salient quantity A (where A[subscript 1] >…

It would be profoundly important if reconsolidation research in animals and other memory domains generalized to human episodic memory. A 3-d-list-discrimination procedure, based on free recall of objects, with a contextual reminder cue (the testing room), has been thought to demonstrate reconsolidation of human episodic memory (as noted in a…

Memory retrieval often enhances later memory compared with restudying (i.e., the testing effect), indicating that retrieval does not simply reveal but also modifies memory representations. Dividing attention (DA) during encoding greatly disrupts later memory performance while DA during retrieval typically has modest effects--but what of the…

Objective: Little is known about cognition's effect on jump-landing movement patterns. Design: Participants completed three baseline cognitive tasks. Then, participants performed three jump-landing trials per condition (dual-task trials (DT)): Stroop Color Word test (SCWT), Symbol Digits Modalities test (SDMT), Brooks Visuospatial task (BVT), and…

Heterogeneous effects of semantic distance in language production have sparked a debate on the central assumption of many language production models, namely that lexical selection is a competitive process. In the present ERP study, we manipulated semantic distance in the picture word interference (PWI) paradigm systematically within taxonomic…

In Simon-type interference tasks, participants are asked to perform a 2-choice reaction on a stimulus dimension while ignoring the stimulus position. Commonly, robust congruency effects are found; that is, reactions are faster when the relevant stimulus attribute and the assigned response match the location of the stimulus. Simon congruency…

Purpose: When speakers retrieve words, they do so extremely quickly and accurately--both speed and accuracy of word retrieval are compromised in persons with aphasia (PWA). This study examined the contribution of two domain-general mechanisms: processing speed and cognitive control on word retrieval in PWA. Method: Three groups of participants,…

Whereas some evidence exists that math anxiety may interfere with math performance from the very beginning of primary school, no study to date has attempted to investigate whether math anxiety may also interfere with early math learning (i.e., the encoding of new math knowledge) and not only with recalling already mastered contents in test…

It has been suggested that the Stroop task gives rise to 2 conflicts: the information conflict (color vs. word meaning) and the task conflict (name the color vs. read the word). However, behavioral indications for task conflict (reaction time [RT] congruent condition longer than RT neutral condition) appear under very restricted conditions. We…

In the Stroop task, color words are presented in colored fonts and the task of the subject is to either name the word or name the color. If the word and font color are in agreement, then the stimulus is said to be congruent (e.g., RED in red font color); however, if the word and font color are not in agreement, the stimulus is said to be…