In sound symbolism, a word's sound induces expectations about the nature of a salient aspect of the word's referent. P. Walker (2016a) proposed that cross-sensory correspondences can be the source of these expectations, and the present study assessed three implications flowing from this proposal. First, sound symbolism will embrace a wide range of…

Seeing pictures of objects activates the motor cortex and can have an influence on subsequent grasping actions. However, the exact nature of the motor representations evoked by these pictures is unclear. For example, action plans engaged by pictures could be most affected by direct visual input and computed online based on object shape.…

Motor affordances have been shown to play a role in visual object identification and categorization. The present study explored whether working memory is likewise supported by motor affordances. Use of motor affordances should be disrupted by motor interference, and this effect should be larger for objects that have motor affordances than for…

One way to describe the location of an object is to relate it to another object. Often there are many nearby objects, each of which could serve as a candidate to be the reference object. A common theoretical assumption is that features that make a given object salient relative to the candidate set are instrumental in determining which is selected.…

The authors investigated whether speakers who named several objects processed them sequentially or in parallel. Speakers named object triplets, arranged in a triangle, in the order left, right, and bottom object. The left object was easy or difficult to identify and name. During the saccade from the left to the right object, the right object shown…

In 4 experiments, the authors explored the role of visual layout in rule-based syntactic judgments. Participants judged the validity of a set of algebraic equations that tested their ability to apply the order of operations. In each experiment, a nonmathematical grouping pressure was manipulated to support or interfere with the mathematical…

In contextual cueing, the position of a target within a group of distractors is learned over repeated exposure to a display with reference to a few nearby items rather than to the global pattern created by the elements. The authors contrasted the role of global and local contexts for contextual cueing in naturalistic scenes. Experiment 1 showed…

The authors used state-trace methodology to investigate whether a single dimension (e.g., strength) is sufficient to account for recall and judgments of learning (JOLs) or whether multiple dimensions (e.g., intrinsic and extrinsic factors) are needed. The authors separately manipulated the independent variables of intrinsic and extrinsic cues,…

Three experiments involved imagining the result of either an array rotating relative to a fixed viewer or a viewer rotating relative to a fixed array. The data suggested that adults use literal, concrete strategies to solve these problems. (Author/PN)