Attention is shifted reflexively to where other people are looking. It has been argued by a number of investigators that this social attention effect reflects the obligatory bottom-up activation of domain-specific modules within the inferior temporal (IT) cortex that are specialized for processing face and gaze information. However, it is also the…

There is mounting evidence that language comprehension involves the activation of mental imagery of the content of utterances (Barsalou, 1999; Bergen, Chang, & Narayan, 2004; Bergen, Narayan, & Feldman, 2003; Narayan, Bergen, & Weinberg, 2004; Richardson, Spivey, McRae, & Barsalou, 2003; Stanfield & Zwaan, 2001; Zwaan, Stanfield, & Yaxley, 2002).…

In Robbins, R. & McKone, E. (2006). No face-like processing for object-of-expertise in three behavioural tasks. "Cognition" this issue, we showed face-like holistic/configural processing does not occur for objects-of-expertise on standard paradigms including inversion, part-whole, part-in-configurally-transformed-whole, and the standard composite…

This study was designed to explore how adults with autism and Asperger syndrome (ASD) would visually process compound figures. They were tested in two tasks, one involving hierarchical global/local stimuli, the other involving face-like or geometrical stimuli where the processing of the inter-elemental spatial relationships was emphasized. Adults…

Previous studies indicate that the benefits of dividing an information processing load across both cerebral hemispheres outweigh the costs of interhemispheric transfer as tasks become more difficult or cognitively complex. This is demonstrated as better performance when two stimuli to be compared are presented one to each visual field and…

In the analysis of ability structure and loss of vision, 228 blind persons (153 male, 75 female) heterogenous in respect to chronological age, sex, degree of blindness, age at onset, and duration, were compared to sighted controls. A test battery was administered which included tests for verbal comprehension, mental arithmetic, spatial ability,…

Virtual reality (VR) technology has demonstrated effectiveness in a variety of technical learning situations, yet little is known about its differential effects on learners with different levels of visual processing skill. This small-scale exploratory study tested VR through quasi-experimental methodology and a theoretical/conceptual framework…

This study tests the hypothesis that dyslexia and dyscalculia are associated with two largely independent cognitive deficits, namely a phonological deficit in the case of dyslexia and a deficit in the number module in the case of dyscalculia. In four groups of 8- to 10-year-olds (42 control, 21 dyslexic, 20 dyscalculic, and 26…

The defining attributes of analytic ability as they relate to theoretical cognitive styles were explored in a study using a sample of 492 males aged 16-21 years. The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT--Witkin, Oltman, Rasher, and Karp) was used to measure field dependent and independent aptitude. Scores on the GEFT were compared with scores on an…

One hundred twenty-three fifth grade students participated in a study that investigated the role of prosodic cues in children's comprehension of discourse. The subjects, both good and poor readers, read, listened to, or read and listened to a story in one of four modes of visual and auditory presentation: (1) no audio, (2) normally intoned, (3)…

The effects of age, task, and egocentric responding on visual-spatial perspective taking were studied among 41 preschool children between 3.0 and 5.9 years of age. Children were individually administered three perspective-taking measures: the upside-down/right-side-up task, a block task, and a picture box task, all previously described in the…

A total of 100 third and ninth grade students participated in a study to determine how children of different ages perceptually segment a continuing behavior sequence presented on a television program. The children were shown a short segment from a motion picture on a videotape viewer. Following the viewing, the children completed unitizing…

The development of children's capacity to induce spatial relations between locations in a space was investigated in this study. The sample consisted of 60 children, 20 in each of three age groups: 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8 years of age. The children were trained to move one hand from a home base to each of three target positions. The positions were…

The work described in this report is aimed at understanding the role of cognitive development, especially perceptual development, in the reading process and its acquisition. The papers included describe: (1) a theory of perceptual learning, (2) an investigation of the perception of morphological information, (3) the role of categorical semantic…