The present study investigated the effects of approach versus avoidance motivation on declarative learning. Human participants navigated a virtual reality version of the Morris water task, a classic spatial memory paradigm, adapted to permit the experimental manipulation of motivation during learning. During this task, participants were instructed…

People encode goal-directed behaviors, such as assembling an object, by segmenting them into discrete actions, organized as goal-subgoal hierarchies. Does hierarchical encoding contribute to observational learning? Participants in 3 experiments segmented an object assembly task into coarse and fine units of action and later performed it…

The meta analysis reported in this paper considers the implications of combined correlational evidence for the nature of the relationships of mathematical and spatial skills, and for the possibility that spatial skill underlies gender differences in favor of males on mathematical tasks. In all, 136 studies reported in 116 articles and…