Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts approximately 7% of the population and is characterized by unexplained deficits in expressive and/or receptive components of language. A common procedural learning task, serial reaction time (SRT), has been used to develop models of the basis of DLD.…

The effects of fluency-based instruction and accuracy-based instruction on contingency adduction were assessed using an alternating treatments design. Stimulus equivalence tasks were used to measure contingency adduction. Stimulus classes were composed of arbitrary visual forms. One treatment condition consisted of teaching fast, fluent responding…

Everyday task sequences, such as cooking, contain overarching goals (completing the meal), subgoals (prepare vegetables), and motor actions (chopping). Such tasks generally are considered hierarchical because superordinate levels (e.g., goals) affect performance at subordinate levels (e.g., subgoals and motor actions). However, there is debate as…

We used a technique known as reach tracking to investigate how individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) relate to the functioning of two processes proposed to underlie cognitive control: a threshold adjustment process that temporarily inhibits motor output in response to signals of conflict and a controlled selection process that…

Category learning is fundamental to cognition, but little is known about how it proceeds in real-world environments when learners do not have instructions to search for category-relevant information, do not make overt category decisions, and do not experience direct feedback. Prior research demonstrates that listeners can acquire task-irrelevant…

Sleep is considered to support the formation of skill memory. In juvenile but not adult song birds learning a tutor's song, a stronger initial deterioration of song performance over night-sleep predicts better song performance in the long run. This and similar observations have stimulated the view of sleep supporting skill formation during…

We examined the effects of a brief period of limb immobilization on the cognitive level of action control. A splint placed on the participants' left hand was used as a means of immobilization. We used a hand mental rotation task to investigate the immobilization-induced effects on motor imagery performance (Experiments 1 and 2) and a number mental…

Studies on affordances typically focus on single objects. We investigated whether affordances are modulated by the context, defined by the relation between two objects and a hand. Participants were presented with pictures displaying two manipulable objects linked by a functional (knife-butter), a spatial (knife-coffee mug), or by no relation. They…

Increased intrasubject variability (ISV), or short-term, within-person fluctuations in behavioral performance is consistently found in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). ADHD is also associated with impairments in motor control, particularly in boys. The results of the few studies that have examined variability in self-generated…

Sleep supports the consolidation of declarative and procedural memory. While prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity supports the consolidation of declarative memory during sleep, opposite effects of PFC activity are reported with respect to the consolidation of procedural memory during sleep. Patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)…

This research aimed to investigate the time course effect of a moderate steady-state exercise session on response execution and response inhibition using a stop-task paradigm. Ten participants performed a stop-signal task whilst cycling at a carefully controlled workload intensity (40% of maximal aerobic power), immediately following exercise and…

We investigated whether motor planning problems in people with Hemiparetic Cerebral Palsy (HCP) are paralleled by impaired ability to use Motor Imagery (MI). While some studies have shown that individuals with HCP can solve a mental rotation task, it was not clear if they used MI or Visual Imagery (VI). In the present study, motor planning and MI…

Aim: This study investigated the nature of coordination and control problems in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Method: Seven adults (two males, five females, age range 20-28y; mean 23y, SD 2y 8mo) and eight children with DCD (six males, two females, age range 7-9y; mean 8y, SD 8mo), and 10 without DCD (seven males, three…

Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the hand area of the left primary motor cortex or, as a control, to the vertex (STIMULATION: TMS[subscript M1] vs. TMS[subscript vertex]) while right-handed volunteers silently read verbs related to hand actions. We examined three different tasks and time points for stimulation…

In this study we examined prepotent motor inhibition and responsiveness to reward using a variation of the stop signal reaction time (SSRT) task in clinic- and community-recruited children ages 7 to 12 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder-inattentive type (ADHD-I), ADHD-combined type (ADHD-C), and non-ADHD controls. Contrary to…