External noise methods and observer models have been widely used to characterize the intrinsic perceptual limitations of human observers and changes of the perceptual limitations associated with cognitive, developmental, and disease processes by highlighting the variance of internal representations. The authors conducted a comprehensive review of…

Schizophrenia may be associated with a fundamental disturbance in the temporal coordination of information processing in the brain, leading to classic symptoms of schizophrenia such as thought disorder and disorganized and contextually inappropriate behavior. Although a variety of behavioral studies have provided strong evidence for perceptual…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not the use of solid modeling software increases participants' success in solving a specified technical problem and how visualization affects their ability to solve a technical problem. Specifically, the study sought to determine if (a) students' visualization skills affect their problem…

In an increasingly aging population, a number of adults are concerned about declines in their cognitive abilities. Online computer-based cognitive training programs have been proposed as an accessible means by which the elderly may improve their cognitive abilities; yet, more research is needed in order to assess the efficacy of these programs. In…

Open-ended tasks are rarely used to investigate cognition in autism. No known studies have directly examined whether increased attention to the perceptual level of speech in autism might contribute to a reduced tendency to process language meaningfully. The present study investigated linguistic versus perceptual speech processing preferences.…

This dissertation compares the phonetic and phonological features of adult non-speakers' productions of words in an endangered Native American language, Oregon Northern Paiute (also known, and hereafter referred to, as Numu), to productions by fluent speakers. The purpose of this comparison is two-fold. The first purpose is to examine the…

This article honours Adele Miccio's life work by reflecting on the utility of phonetic transcription. The first section reviews the literature on cases where children whose speech appears to neutralize a contrast in the adult language are found on closer examination to produce a contrast ("covert contrast"). This study presents evidence…

Change blindness, or the failure to detect (often large) changes to visual scenes, has been demonstrated in a variety of different situations. Failures to detect auditory changes are far less studied, and thus little is known about the nature of change deafness. Five experiments were conducted to explore the processes involved in change deafness…

Everyday environments, even small regions within reach, vary dramatically in terms of material composition. Adapting one's manual behavior to such transitions can be considered to be an important element of skilled action. To investigate the origins of this ability, we presented 8-month-olds (n=24) and 10-month-olds (n=24) hard or soft objects on…

Ivry [Ivry, R. B. (1996). The representation of temporal information in perception and motor control. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 6, 851-857.] proposed that explicit coding of brief time intervals is accomplished by neurons that are tuned to a preferred temporal interval and have broad overlapping tuning curves. This proposal is analogous to…

This article discusses the psychological concept of differentiation,'' its two extremes (global and articulated), and the effects this trait can have on a child's education (articulated children break down their environment into functional and perceptual components while the global person does not change the framework of his perceptions). (JA)

Forty sighted persons (16 to 40 years old) were blindfolded and administered tactual form perception (FP) and spatial aptitude (SA) tests. No statistically significant correlation between scores on the tactual tests and FP and SA subtests of the General Aptitude Test Battery for sighted persons was found. (CL)

The aims of this study were to evaluate whether talker intelligibility is consistent across listeners differing in age and gender and to investigate the process of attunement to talker characteristics in children and adults. Word intelligibility rates were obtained from 135 listeners (adults, 11-12-year-olds, and 7-8-year-olds) for 45 talkers from…

This study examined changes in rhythmic arm shaking and laterality biases in infants observed longitudinally at three points: just prior to, at, and just following reduplicated babble onset. Infants (ranging in age from 4 to 9 months at babble onset) were videotaped at home as they played with two visually identical audible and silent rattles…

This study compared emotion perception accuracy between children with Asperger's syndrome (AS) and high-functioning autism (HFA). Thirty children were diagnosed with AS or HFA based on empirically supported diagnostic criteria and administered an emotion perception test consisting of facial expressions and tone of voice cues that varied in…