Social threat captures attention and is processed rapidly and efficiently, with many lines of research showing involvement of the amygdala. Visual search paradigms looking at social threat have shown angry faces "pop-out" in a crowd, compared to happy faces. Autism and Asperger Syndrome (AS) are neurodevelopmental conditions…

Deficits in "executive function" (EF) are characteristic of several clinical disorders, most notably Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In this study, age-and IQ-matched groups with ASD, ADHD, or typical development (TD) were compared on a battery of EF tasks tapping three core domains:…

The line-bisection task, adapted to utilise a wooden rod as the bisection stimulus, has revealed that patients with visuo-spatial neglect may be more accurate at bisection when asked to pick up the rod, compared to pointing to its centre. We recently reported that neurologically intact participants show a similar dissociation on this…

High functioning children with a diagnosis of autism or Asperger's syndrome (HF-ASD) often experience difficulties organising goal-directed actions in their day-to-day lives, requiring support to schedule daily activities. This study aimed to capture these everyday difficulties experimentally using multitasking, a methodology that taps into the…

The current study investigated whether acute alcohol intoxication produces impaired decision-making on tasks assessing ventromedial prefrontal (VMF) cortex functioning and impulsive responding. Participants completed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a decision-making test targeting the VMF, and the Newman Perseveration Task (NT), a measure of…

Recent findings [Turcotte, Gagnon, & Poirier, 2005. The effect of old age on the learning of supra-span sequences. "Psychology and Aging," 20, 251-260.] indicate that incidental learning of visuo-spatial supra-span sequences through immediate serial recall declines with old age (Hebb's paradigm). In this study, we examined whether…