It is a prevailing theoretical claim that path integration is the primary means of developing global spatial representations. However, this claim is at odds with reported difficulty to develop global spatial representations of a multiscale environment using path integration. The current study tested a new hypothesis that locally similar but…

This study of children from two U. S. states examined associations among four cognitive and academic skills: executive function (EF), visuo-motor integration, mathematics assessed with applied problems, and letter-word knowledge. Before (T1) and after (T2) kindergarten, children (N=555) were assessed using the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) EF…

Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) have impairments in visuospatial tasks and in manual visuomotor control, consistent with parietal and cerebellar abnormalities. Here we examined whether individuals with WS also have difficulties in visually controlling whole-body movements. We investigated visual control of stepping down at a change of…

The relations among various spatial and mathematics skills were assessed in a cross-sectional study of 854 children from kindergarten, third, and sixth grades (i.e., 5 to 13 years of age). Children completed a battery of spatial mathematics tests and their scores were submitted to exploratory factor analyses both within and across domains. In the…

The Woodcock-Johnson-Fourth edition (WJ IV; Schrank, McGrew, & Mather, 2014a) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth edition (WISC-V; Wechsler, 2014) are two of the major tests of cognitive abilities used in school psychology. The complete WJ IV battery includes the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Cognitive Abilities (Schrank,…

Recent research has established a connection between children's fine motor skills and their academic performance. Previous research has focused on fine motor skills measured prior to elementary school, while the present sample included children ages 5-18 years old, making it possible to examine whether this link remains relevant throughout…

Perception is influenced by the perceiver's ability to perform intended actions. For example, when people intend to reach with a tool to targets that are just beyond arm's reach, the targets look closer than when they intend to reach without the tool (J. K. Witt, D. R. Proffitt, & W. Epstein, 2005). This is one of several examples demonstrating…

According to a prominent theory of human perception and performance (M. A. Goodale & A. D. Milner, 1992), the dorsal, action-related stream only controls visually guided actions in real time. Such a system would be predicted to show little or no action priming from previous experience. The 3 experiments reported here were designed to determine…

This literature review focuses on the confirmed, suspected, and speculative effects of violent and non-violent video game exposure on negative and positive outcomes. Negative outcomes include aggressive feelings, aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior, physiological arousal, and desensitization, whereas positive outcomes include various types of…

The authors attempted to identify perceptual mechanisms that pick up information for initiating a run to catch fly balls and for judging their landing locations. Fly balls have been shown to be tracked with the eyes and head (R. R. D. Oudejans, C. F. Michaels, F. C. Bakker, & K. Davids, 1999). This raised the question of whether constraining eye…

Eye movements are often misdirected toward a distractor when it appears abruptly, an effect known as oculomotor capture. Fundamental differences between eye movements and attention have led to questions about the relationship of oculomotor capture to the more general effect of sudden onsets on performance, known as attentional capture. This study…

Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm with the boundary placed after word n, the experiment manipulated preview of word n + 2 for fixations on word n. There was no preview benefit for 1st-pass reading on word n + 2, replicating the results of K. Rayner, B. J. Juhasz, and S. J. Brown (2007), but there was a preview benefit on the 3-letter…

Although the role of memory in visual search is debatable, most researchers agree with a limited-capacity model of memory in visual search. The authors demonstrate the role of memory by replicating previous findings showing that visual search is biased away from old items (previously examined items) and toward new items (nonexamined items).…

Previous research has shown that synchronized flicker can facilitate detection of a single Kanizsa square. The present study investigated the role of temporally structured priming in discrimination tasks involving perceptual relations between multiple Kanizsa-type figures. Results indicate that visual information presented as temporally structured…