This experiment tests the age at which left-to-right spatial associations found in infancy shift to culture-specific spatial biases in later childhood, for both numerical and non-numerical information. Children ages 1-5 years (N = 320) were tested within an eye-tracking paradigm which required passive viewing of a video portraying a spatial…

Behavioral research has shown that 12- but not 9-month-olds imitate an unusual and inefficient action (turning on a lamp with one's forehead) more when the model's hands are free. Rational-imitation accounts suggest that infants evaluate actions based on the rationality principle, that is, they expect people to choose efficient means to achieve a…

In a behavioral study we analyzed the influence of visual action primes on abstract action sentence processing. We thereby aimed at investigating mental motor involvement during processes of meaning constitution of action verbs in abstract contexts. In the first experiment, participants executed either congruous or incongruous movements parallel…

Purpose: It is well recognized that adding the visual to the acoustic speech signal improves recognition when the acoustic signal is degraded, but how that visual signal affects postrecognition processes is not so well understood. This study was designed to further elucidate the relationships among auditory and visual codes in working memory, a…

It is surprising that there are inconsistent findings of transitive inference (TI) in young infants given that non-linguistic species succeed on TI tests. To conclusively test for TI in infants, we developed a task within the social domain, with which infants are known to show sophistication. We familiarized 10- to 13-month-olds (M = 11.53 months)…

The present study investigated German-learning 6-month-old infants' preference for visual speech. Visual stimuli in the infants' native language (German) were contrasted with stimuli in a foreign language with similar rhythmical characteristics (English). In a visual preference task, infants were presented with 2 side-by-side silent video clips of…

Background: Many children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or developmental language disorder (DLD) have difficulty recognizing and understanding emotions. However, the reasons for these difficulties are currently not well understood. Aims: To compare the…

Today technological developments emerge in a blink of an eye with an astounding speed and each update or development is investigated by educational researchers to contribute educational research and practice. VR (Virtual Reality), one of these technologies, can be defined as the visual technology in which a person experiences various virtual…

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.…

Infants' visual preference for infant-directed (ID) faces over adult-directed (AD) faces was examined in two experiments that introduced controls for emotion. Infants' eye movements were recorded as they viewed a series of side-by-side dynamic faces. When emotion was held constant, 6-month-old infants showed no preference for ID faces over AD…

Witnessing emotional events such as arousal or pain may impair ongoing cognitive processes such as inhibitory control. We found that this may be true only half of the time. Erotic images and painful video clips were shown to men and women shortly before a stop signal task, which measures cognitive inhibitory control. These stimuli impaired…

Autism is currently one of the most prominent and widely discussed human conditions. Its increased prevalence has intensified the demand for effective educational and therapeutic services, and intervention science is providing mounting evidence about practices that positively impact outcomes. The purpose of this report is to describe a set of…

The present study examined the role of attentional demand on infants' perseverative behavior in a noncommunicative looking version of an A-not-B task. The research aimed at clarifying age-related improvements in the attention process that presumably underlies the development of cognitive control. In a between-subjects design, forty 10-month-olds…

The perception of intent in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often relies on synthetic animacy displays. This study tests intention perception in ASD via animacy stimuli derived from human motion. Using a forced choice task, 28 participants (14 ASDs; 14 age and verbal-I.Q. matched controls) categorized displays of Chasing, Fighting, Flirting,…

In order to acquire some aspects of grammar, such as wh-questions and verb tense agreement, children must be able to learn nonadjacent dependencies. This type of learning has been demonstrated in both children and adults, but is reported to be difficult. The current study investigated whether children with autism (ASD) would show a similar pattern…