A pretest-training-posttest design assessed whether training to improve spatial skills also improved mathematics performance in elementary-aged children. First grade students (mean age = 7 years, n = 134) and sixth grade students (mean age = 12 years, n = 124) completed training in 1 of 2 spatial skills--spatial visualization or form…

A pretest-training-posttest design assessed whether training to improve spatial skills also improved mathematics performance in elementary-aged children. First grade students (mean age = 7 years, n = 134) and sixth grade students (mean age = 12 years, n = 124) completed training in 1 of 2 spatial skills-spatial visualization or form…

The present study examined the hypothesis that inhibitory visual selection mechanisms play a vital role in memory by limiting distractor interference during item encoding. In Experiment 1a we used a modified spatial cueing task in which 9-month-old infants encoded multiple category exemplars in the contexts of an attention orienting mechanism…

Spatial scaling is an important prerequisite for many spatial tasks and involves an understanding of how distances in different-sized spaces correspond. Previous studies have found evidence for such an understanding in preschoolers; however, the mental processes involved remain unclear. In the present study, we investigated whether children and…

The integrated use of spatial and temporal information seems to support the separation of two sensory streams. The present study tested whether this facilitation depends on the encoding of sensory stimuli in externally anchored spatial coordinate systems. Fifty-nine children between 5 and 12 years as well as 12 young adults performed a crossmodal…

An increasing number of studies has investigated the latent factor structure of executive functions. Some studies found a three-factor structure of inhibition, shifting, and updating, but others could not replicate this finding. We assumed that the task choices and scoring methods might be responsible for these contradictory findings. Therefore,…

Although there is good evidence that the behavioral traits of autism extend in lesser form to the general population, there has been limited investigation of whether cognitive features of the disorder also accompany these milder traits. This study investigated whether the superiority in visuospatial analysis established for individuals with autism…

The present study was aimed at exploring newborns' ability to recognize configural changes within real face images by testing newborns' sensitivity to the Thatcher illusion. Using the habituation procedure, newborns' ability to discriminate between an unaltered face image and the same face with the eyes and the mouth 180 degrees rotated (i.e.…

The aim of this study was to clarify the features of mental development and autistic behavior in children with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) from the viewpoint of remedial therapy. The Tokyo Child Development Schedule (TCDS) and the Tokyo Autistic Behavior Scale (TABS), designed to be completed by children's caregivers, were used. A…

The potential effect of gender on intellectual abilities remains controversial. The purpose of this research was to analyze gender differences in cognitive test performance among children from continuous age groups. For this purpose, the normative data from 7 domains of the newly developed neuropsychological test battery, the Evaluacion…

Visual events are defined by a number of dimensions--their location in space, content (color, shape, etc.), and time tags (onset, duration, etc.). The role of time in infants' performance in the Visual Expectation Paradigm (VExP) was studied to evaluate whether infants encode in their expectation representation the timing of events in addition to…

Three-year-olds were given a search task with conflicting cues about the target's location. A ball rolled behind a transparent screen and stopped behind one of four opaque doors mounted into the screen. A wall that protruded above one door provided a visible cue of blockage in the ball's path, while the transparent screen allowed visual tracking…

In two experiments, the principles of cognitive load theory were applied to the design of alternatives to conventional music instruction hypothesised to facilitate learning. Experiment 1 demonstrated that spatial integration of visual text and musical notation, and dual-modal delivery of auditory text and musical notation, were superior to the…

A sample of 44 infants of five months of age showed a significant reaching preference for the apparently nearer region of a computer-generated display. This indicated that the infants were sensitive to boundary flow information for depth at an edge. (RH)

Three experiments using the familiarization-novelty preference procedure confirmed the hypothesis that three-month-old infants could form categorical representations of spatial relations above and below. The infants, after being shown a familiarization diagram with a dot appearing in multiple locations below a line, showed a preference for a novel…