In prospective memory (PM) research, costs (slowed responding to the ongoing task when a PM task is present relative to when it is not) have typically been interpreted as implicating an attentionally demanding monitoring process. To inform this interpretation, Heathcote, Loft, and Remington (2015), using an accumulator model, found that PM-related…

Although memory retrieval often enhances subsequent memory, Peterson and Mulligan (2013) reported conditions under which retrieval produces poorer subsequent recall--the negative testing effect. The item-specific--relational account proposes that the effect occurs when retrieval disrupts interitem organizational processing relative to the restudy…

Two main mechanisms, articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing, are argued to be involved in the maintenance of verbal information in working memory (WM). Whereas converging research has suggested that rehearsal promotes the phonological representations of memoranda in working memory, little is known about the representations that…

The "nothing-special" account of insight predicts positive correlations of insight problem solving and working memory capacity (WMC), whereas the "special-process" account expects no, or even negative, correlations. In the latter vein, DeCaro, Van Stockum Jr., and Wieth (2016) have recently reported weak negative WMC…

We report an experiment designed to provide a qualitative contrast between knowledge-limited versions of mixed-state and variable-resources (VR) models of visual change detection. The key data pattern is that observers often respond "same" on big-change trials, while simultaneously being able to discriminate between same and small-change…

An English double-embedded relative clause from which the middle verb is omitted can often be processed more easily than its grammatical counterpart, a phenomenon known as the grammaticality illusion. This effect has been found to be reversed in German, suggesting that the illusion is language specific rather than a consequence of universal…

Children's knowledge of repeating patterns (e.g., ABBABB) is a central component of early mathematics, but the developmental mechanisms underlying this knowledge are currently unknown. We sought clarity on the importance of relational knowledge and executive function (EF) to preschoolers' understanding of repeating patterns. One hundred…

There is substantial debate in the field of short-term memory (STM) as to whether the process of active maintenance occurs through memory-trace reactivation or repair. A key difference between these 2 potential mechanisms is that a repair mechanism should lead to recovery of forgotten information. The ability to recover forgotten memories would be…

The study aims at identifying characteristic phenotypes for children with SLI and children with sensorineural hearing impairment (HI) in language and in domains associated with language. We focus on verbal agreement inflection and phonological short-term memory, phenomena that have been repeatedly found to be impaired in both groups of children. A…

Bilingual children often show advanced executive functioning (EF) and false belief (FB) understanding compared to monolinguals. The latter has been attributed to their enhanced inhibitory control EF, although this has only been examined in a single study which did not confirm this hypothesis. The current study examined the relation of EF and…

Cross-cultural research on children's theory of mind (ToM) understanding has raised questions about its developmental sequence and relationship with executive function (EF). The current study examined how ToM develops (using the tasks from Wellman & Liu, 2004) in relation to 2 EF skills (conflict inhibition, working memory) in 997 Chinese…

Mind wandering--mentation unrelated to one's current activity and surroundings--is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but seemingly competing ideas have been proposed regarding its relation to executive cognitive processes. The control-failure hypothesis postulates that executive processes prevent mind wandering, whereas the global availability hypothesis…

The purpose of this study is to investigate and conceptualize the ranks of importance of social cognitive variables on university students' computer programming performances. Spatial ability, working memory, self-efficacy, gender, prior knowledge and the universities students attend were taken as variables to be analyzed. The study has been…

The sources of forgetting in working memory remain the matter of intense debate. According to the SOB model (serial order in a box; Farrell & Lewandowsky, 2002), forgetting in complex span tasks does not result from temporal decay but from interference produced by the encoding of distractors that are superimposed over memory items onto a…

The aim of this study was to analyse the role of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) and language skills (vocabulary, listening comprehension) in predicting preschool and kindergarten-aged children's ability to solve mathematical word problems presented orally. The participants were 116 Finnish-speaking children aged 4-7?years. The…