Object-substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a mask, such as four dots that surround a brief target item, onsets simultaneously with the target and offsets a short time after the target, rather than simultaneously with it. OSM is a reduction in accuracy of reporting the target with the temporally trailing mask, compared with the simultaneously…

Multiple object tracking (MOT) is an attentional task wherein observers attempt to track multiple targets among moving distractors. Contour interpolation is a perceptual process that fills-in nonvisible edges on the basis of how surrounding edges (inducers) are spatiotemporally related. In five experiments, we explored the automaticity of…

Objective: Deficits in cognitive flexibility and response inhibition have been linked to perturbations in cortico-striatal-thalamic circuitry in adult obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Although similar cognitive deficits have been identified in pediatric OCD, few neuroimaging studies have been conducted to examine its neural correlates in the…

Objective: Clinicians and researchers debate whether children with chronic, nonepisodic irritability should receive the diagnosis of bipolar disorder (BD). To address this debate, we evaluated cognitive flexibility, or the ability to adapt to changing contingencies, in three groups of children: narrow-phenotype BD (NP-BD; full-duration manic…

Relation priming is a phenomenon in which comprehension of a word pair (e.g., COPPER HORSE) is facilitated by the prior presentation of another word pair (e.g., GLASS EYE) that instantiates the same conceptual relation (i.e., "composed of"). We investigated whether relation priming is contingent on lexical similarity. Study 1 revealed that…

Second and sixth grade children's relative sensitivity to acoustic, semantic, and physical dimensions was inferred from the amount of release from proactive interference obtained for shifts along each dimension. (ED)

Previous studies have suggested better learning when people actively intervene rather than when they passively observe the stimuli in a judgment task. In 4 experiments, the authors investigated the hypothesis that this improvement is associated with a shift from exemplar memory to cue abstraction. In a multiple-cue judgment task with continuous…

Uses the balance scale task to assess the development of compensation across versions of the task. Shows that fully reversible thinking may not be typical even in college students; many subjects used the compensation operation inconsistently. Preschoolers tended to use the given information in a way that was opposite to that required for correct…

Replies to Gholson's commentary (PS 522 655) on the article by Coldren and Colombo in this monograph. Discusses limitations in the shift procedure methodology traditionally used in research on discrimination learning, and considers the use in future research of methodologies that can precisely decompose children's responses to feedback during…

The purpose of this experiment was to compare components of the human and rat auditory event-related potential (ERP) in a serial feature-positive discrimination task. Subjects learned to respond to an auditory target stimulus when it followed a visual feature (X [right arrow] A+), but to not respond when it was presented alone (A-). Upon solving…

In this article, the authors propose to characterize sequence learning in terms of automatic versus nonautomatic processing and to apply this contrast independently to knowledge acquisition and retrieval. In several experiments of sequence learning, automaticity of both the acquisition and retrieval of the acquired knowledge was independently…

Multiple (external) representations can provide unique benefits when people are learning complex new ideas. Unfortunately, many studies have shown this promise is not always achieved. The DeFT (Design, Functions, Tasks) framework for learning with multiple representations integrates research on learning, the cognitive science of representation and…

Investigates the development of evaluative and taxonomic encoding in 7-, to 8-, and 11-year-old children's memories, and related experimental findings to recent work on the development of encoding in memory. (Author/ED)

This study examined the relationship between convergent and divergent thinking and performance errors in reversal and nonreversal concept tasks. The results show: (1) a positive relationship between convergent performance and concept errors; and (2) an inverse relationship between divergent performance and concept errors. These correlational…

Experiment conducted to determine the different effects of a mediational method of verbal learning and visual-discrimination verbal learning. (Author/MM)