Cognitive performance is affected by an individual's characteristics and the environment, as well as by the nature of the task and the amount of practice at it. Mental performance tests range in complexity and include subjective estimates of mood, simple objective tests (reaction time), and measures of complex performance that require decisions to…

Aim: Subcortical band heterotopia (SBH) or "double cortex" is a malformation of cortical development resulting from impaired neuronal migration. So far, research has focused on the neurological, neuroimaging, and genetic correlates of SBH. More recently, clinical reports and small sample studies have documented neuropsychological dysfunction in…

In this study we examined the effects of skill training, in particular mental abacus and music training, on working memory. Two groups of participants--children who had received mental abacus training and their controls--participated in Experiment 1. All participants performed the following span tasks: forward digit span, backward digit span,…

The interaction of emotion and cognition has become a topic of major interest. However, the influence of gender on the interplay between the two processes, along with its neural correlates have not been fully analysed so far. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we induced negative emotion using negative olfactory stimulation…

Evidence that the abilities to repeat nonwords and to learn language are very closely related to one another has led to widespread interest in the cognitive processes underlying nonword repetition. One suggestion is that nonword repetition is a relatively pure measure of phonological short-term memory closely associated with other measures of…

In this study we present a self-organizing connectionist model of early lexical development. We call this model DevLex-II, based on the earlier DevLex model. DevLex-II can simulate a variety of empirical patterns in children's acquisition of words. These include a clear vocabulary spurt, effects of word frequency and length on age of acquisition,…

This study investigated the effects of perceived controllability on information processing within Weiner's (1985, 1986) attributional model of learning. Attributional style was used to identify trait patterns of controllability for 37 university students. Task-relevant feedback on an information-processing task was then manipulated to test for…

A series of studies was conducted to determine whether children's reasoning is capacity-limited and whether any such capacity, if it exists, is based on the working memory system. An N-term series (transitive inference) was used as the primary task in an interference paradigm. A concurrent short-term memory load was employed as the secondary task.…

Three experiments investigated forgetting when a processing task is interpolated between presentation and recall of memory items with children ages 8-17 years. Findings showed consistent effects of the duration of the task, but no effects of its difficulty or similarity to memory material, and no developmental differences in task performance.…

Comparison of 12 language disordered children (ages 7-13) with 12 normally achieving children on a short-term memory scanning task found the children with language disorders had substantially reduced processing speed as seen in longer memory retrieval time. The decreased memory scanning speed may contribute to linguistic deficits. (Author/DB)

Assessed sex differences in performance on the subtests of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children using more than 2,500 children ages 2-1/2 to 12-1/2 years old. Results confirmed previous research with female superiority on short-term memory tasks and male superiority on spatial-visualization skills. (Author/ABL)

Investigated whether children's recognition memory for movement in photographs is distorted forward in the direction of implied motion. When asked whether the second photograph was the same as or different from the first, subjects made more errors for test photographs showing the action slightly forward in time, compared with slightly backward in…

Fourteen children (ages 72-134 months) with specific language impairment (SLI) and 13 with normal language completed a nonsense word repetition task and a sentence comprehension task. Results suggest that SLI children have diminished phonological working memory capacity and that this capacity deficit compromises their sentence comprehension…

Forty-eight children, either with or without a sensorineural hearing loss and either young (6 and 7 years old) or older (9 and 10 years old) reproduced sequences of acoustic stimuli that varied in number, temporal spacing, and type. Results suggested that the poorer performance of the hearing-impaired children was due to auditory processing…

This study examined the metacognitive ability (recall readiness) in matched groups of children with autism, children with mental retardation, and normally developing children (all with a mental age of 7). Children with autism and children with mental retardation had impaired recall readiness compared to the normally developing children. (Author/DB)