We examined the cognitive predictors of early word reading skills in Japanese syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. Eighty-three Japanese kindergarten children (M age = 75.6 months, SD = 3.4) were assessed on nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological memory, morphological awareness, and…

Auditory speech appears to be linked to visual articulatory gestures and orthography through different mechanisms. Yet, both types of visual information have a strong influence on speech processing. The present study directly compared their contributions to speech processing using a novel word learning paradigm. Native speakers of French, who were…

Speech, reading, and writing are the basic forms of linguistic communication. Therefore, it is very important to diagnose any problems with them as early and completely as possible, particularly in children with special needs. One of the methods that focuses primarily on the diagnosis and therapy of such learning difficulties is the one developed…

A popular hypothesis in evolutionary psychology posits that reciprocal altruism is supported by a cognitive module that helps cooperative individuals to detect and remember cheaters. Consistent with this hypothesis, a source memory advantage for faces of cheaters (better memory for the cheating context in which these faces were encountered) was…

This twin study examined the relative contributions of genes and environment on 2nd language reading acquisition of Chinese-speaking children learning English. We examined whether specific skills-visual word recognition, receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and speech discrimination-in the 1st and 2nd languages have…

Decision-makers effortlessly balance the need for urgency against the need for caution. Theoretical and neurophysiological accounts have explained this tradeoff solely in terms of the "quantity" of evidence required to trigger a decision (the "threshold"). This explanation has also been used as a benchmark test for evaluating…

This research was conducted in order to examine the influence of manifest strabismus and stereoscopic vision on non-verbal abilities of visually impaired children aged between 7 and 15. The sample included 55 visually impaired children from the 1st to the 6th grade of elementary schools for visually impaired children in Belgrade. RANDOT stereotest…

Discrimination and recognition are often poorer for other-race than own-race faces. These other-race effects (OREs) have traditionally been attributed to reduced perceptual expertise, resulting from more limited experience, with other-race faces. However, recent findings suggest that sociocognitive factors, such as reduced motivation to…

During the second year of life, infants develop a preference to attach novel labels to novel objects. This behavior is commonly known as "mutual exclusivity" (Markman, 1989). In an intermodal preferential looking experiment with 19.5- and 22.5-month-olds, stimulus repetition was critical for observing mutual exclusivity. On the first…

Eyewitness memory is known to be fallible. We describe 3 experiments that aim to establish baseline performance for recognition of unfamiliar faces. In Experiment 1, viewers were shown live actors or photos (targets), and then immediately presented with arrays of 10 faces (test items). Asked whether the target was present among the test items, and…

World knowledge influences how we perceive the world. This study shows that this influence is at least partly mediated by declarative memory. Dutch and German participants categorized hues from a yellow-to-orange continuum on stimuli that were prototypically orange or yellow and that were also associated with these color labels. Both groups gave…

Stimulus over-selectivity is a phenomenon displayed by individuals with autism, and has been implicated as a basis for many autistic-spectrum symptoms. In four experiments, non-autistic adult participants were required to learn a simple discrimination using picture cards, and then were tested for the emergence of stimulus over-selectivity, both…

Explored new-born babys' capacity for forming visual memories. Used an habituation procedure that accommodated individual differences by allowing each infant to control the time course of habituation trials. Found significant novelty preference, providing strong evidence that recognition memory can be reliably demonstrated from birth. (Author/JAC)

Two studies investigated the effect of age on memory for visual and spatial information. Five to 10 year olds were asked to reconstruct a previously seen spatial arrangement of objects. The association between an object's identity and its location was weaker for younger than for older children. (LB)

The ability of 1-month-old infants to recognize their mothers visually was explored with the live faces of mother and stranger presented in three different poses: en face (full face), half-profile, and profile. Subjects were 16 infants with normal Apgar scores at birth who were volunteered by their parents after an initial contact in a maternity…