Purpose: Prior work has demonstrated that competing tasks impact habitual speech production. The purpose of this investigation was to quantify the extent to which clear and loud speech are affected by concurrent performance of an attention-demanding task. Method: Speech kinematics and acoustics were collected while participants spoke using…

The aim of the study was to focus on whether visual processing differs between distinct levels of reading competence in young adults, from a regular orthography. We compared the 10% highest scoring (HRC) and the 10% lowest scoring groups (LRC) of reading competence (using the word chain test, WCT) in visual processing of global coherent motion and…

Theories of perceptual decision making have been dominated by the idea that evidence accumulates in favor of different alternatives until some fixed threshold amount is reached, which triggers a decision. Recent theories have suggested that these thresholds may not be fixed during each decision but change as time passes. These collapsing…

While there is a long history and tradition of behavioral research on basic motor skills in Down syndrome (DS), there has been only limited research on handwriting ability. We analyzed the spatiotemporal features of handwriting produced by children and adults with DS (n = 24), and compared their productions with those of comparison groups matched…

A common approach for introducing students to a new science concept is to present them with multiple cases of the phenomenon and ask them to explore. The expectation is that students will naturally take advantage of the multiple cases to support their learning and seek an underlying principle for the phenomenon. However, the success of such tasks…

A common approach for introducing students to a new science concept is to present them with multiple cases of the phenomenon and ask them to explore. The expectation is that students will naturally take advantage of the multiple cases to support their learning and seek an underlying principle for the phenomenon. However, the success of such tasks…

We investigated the kinds of biological properties that children aged 3-6 years attribute to animals, plants, and artifacts by administering a property attribution task and eliciting explanations for the resulting property attributions. Findings indicated that, from the age of 3 years, children more frequently attribute properties to animals than…

Reasoning about graphical representations representing dynamic data (e.g., distance changing over time), including interpreting, creating, changing, combining, and comparing graphs, can be considered a domain-specific operationalization of the general twenty-first century skills of creative, critical thinking and solving problems. This paper…

The emergence of dynamic visualizations of three-dimensional (3D) models in anatomy curricula may be an adequate solution for spatial difficulties encountered with traditional static learning, as they provide direct visualization of change throughout the viewpoints. However, little research has explored the interplay between learning material…

Previous studies have asked whether visual sensitivity and attentional processing in deaf signers are enhanced or altered as a result of their different sensory experiences during development, i.e., auditory deprivation and exposure to a visual language. In particular, deaf and hearing signers have been shown to exhibit a right visual field/left…

The perception of intent in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often relies on synthetic animacy displays. This study tests intention perception in ASD via animacy stimuli derived from human motion. Using a forced choice task, 28 participants (14 ASDs; 14 age and verbal-I.Q. matched controls) categorized displays of Chasing, Fighting, Flirting,…

Aim: The purpose of this study was to characterize handwriting deficits in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) using computerized movement analyses. Method: Seventy-two children (40 females, 32 males; mean age 7y, SD 7mo; range 6y 2mo to 7y 11mo) with handwriting deficits (33 with DCD, 39 without DCD); and 22 age- and…

To locate objects in the environment, animals and humans use visual and nonvisual information. We were interested in children's ability to relocate an object on the basis of self-motion and local and distal color cues for orientation. Five- to 9-year-old children were tested on an object location memory task in which, between presentation and…

What role does language play during attention allocation in perceiving and remembering events? We recorded adults' eye movements as they studied animated motion events for a later recognition task. We compared native speakers of two languages that use different means of expressing motion (Greek and English). In Experiment 1, eye movements revealed…

We compared psychophysical thresholds for biological and non-biological motion detection in adults with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) and controls. Participants watched animations of a biological stimulus (a moving hand) or a non-biological stimulus (a falling tennis ball). The velocity profile of the movement was varied between 100% natural…