Although domain-specificity is prevalent in models of human cognition, its presence is not always easy to verify. For example, according to one prominent model, experiencing conflict from an incongruent distractor in a Stroop-like task triggers an upregulation of domain-specific control that facilitates the resolution of the same, but not a…

Four experiments tested the forgetting fixation hypothesis of incubation effects, comparing continuous vs. alternating generation of exemplars from three different types of categories. In two experiments, participants who listed as many members as possible from two different categories produced more responses, and more novel responses, when they…

Sequential action makes up the bulk of human daily activity, and yet much remains unknown about how people learn such actions. In one motor learning paradigm, the serial reaction time (SRT) task, people are taught a consistent sequence of button presses by cueing them with the next target response. However, the SRT task only records keypress…

The learned predictiveness effect or LPE is the finding that when people learn that certain cues are reliable predictors of an outcome in an initial stage of training (phase 1), they exhibit a learning bias in favor of these cues in a subsequent training involving new outcomes (phase 2) despite all cues being equally reliable in phase 2. In…

Recent work has demonstrated that the addition of multiple talkers during habituation improves 14-month-olds' performance in the switch task (Rost & McMurray, 2009). While the authors suggest that this boost in performance is due to the increase in acoustic variability (Rost & McMurray, 2010), it is also possible that there is…

N-2 task repetition cost is a response time and error cost returning to a task recently performed after one intervening trial (i.e., an ABA task sequence) compared with returning to a task not recently performed (i.e., a CBA task sequence). This cost is considered a robust measure of inhibitory control during task switching. The present article…

Recently, a great deal of research has demonstrated that although everyday experience is continuous in nature, it is parsed into separate events. The aim of the present study was to examine whether event structure can influence the effectiveness of cognitive control. Across 5 experiments we varied the structure of events within the AX-CPT by…

Classic theories emphasized the role of expectations in the intentional control of attention and action. However, recent theorizing has implicated experience-dependent, online adjustments as the primary basis for cognitive control--adjustments that appear to be implicit (Blais, Harris, Guerrero, & Bunge, 2012). The purpose of the current study…

An influential theory of spatial navigation states that the boundary shape of an environment is preferentially encoded over and above other spatial cues, such that it is impervious to interference from alternative sources of information. We explored this claim with 3 intradimensional--extradimensional shift experiments, designed to examine the…

It is almost a truism that language aids serial-order control through self-cuing of upcoming sequential elements. We measured speech onset latencies as subjects performed hierarchically organized task sequences while "thinking aloud" each task label. Surprisingly, speech onset latencies and response times (RTs) were highly synchronized,…

Irony comprehension in seven- and eight-year-old children with typically developing language skills was explored under the framework of the graded salience hypothesis. Target ironic remarks, either conventional or novel/situation-specific, were presented following brief story contexts. Children's responses to comprehension questions were used to…

Performing 2 highly similar tasks at the same time requires an adaptive regulation of cognitive control to shield prioritized primary task processing from between-task (cross-talk) interference caused by secondary task processing. In the present study, the authors investigated how implicitly and explicitly delivered information promotes the…

Cognitive load theory (CLT) (Sweller 1988, 1998, 2010) provides us a guiding framework for designing instructional materials. CLT differentiates three subtypes of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. The three cognitive loads are theorized based on the number of simultaneously processed elements in working memory.…

The study investigated the effect of selection cues in working memory (WM) on the fate of not-selected contents of WM. Experiments 1A and 1B showed that focusing on 1 cued item in WM does not impair memory for the remaining items. The nonfocused items are maintained in WM even when this is not required by the task. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that…

A central issue in second language acquisition (SLA) research is the relationship between morphosyntactic and lexical-semantic knowledge among L2 learners. It has been proposed that, L2 language acquisition starts with transfer of L1 semantic and morphosyntactic processing strategies; however, it has been observed that, at lower proficiency…