Temporal and spatial attentional deficits in dyslexia were investigated using a lateralized visual temporal order judgment (TOJ) paradigm that allowed both sensitivity to temporal order and spatial attentional bias to be measured. Findings indicate that adult participants with a positive screen for dyslexia were significantly less sensitive to the…

The high incidence of number transcoding deficits in aphasic subjects suggests there is a strong similarity between language and number domains. However, recent single case studies of subjects who showed a dissociation between word and number word transcoding led us to hypothesize that the two types of stimuli are represented independently in the…

We argue that the concept of goal neglect can be fruitfully applied to understand children's potential problems in experimental tasks and real-world settings. We describe an assessment of goal neglect developed for administration to preschool children and report data on two measures derived from this task alongside the Dimensional Change Card Sort…

We present a microgenetic analysis of the gestures that children produce as they talk about a balance task. Children gesture spontaneously on this task and here their hand gestures are considered in relation to the accompanying speech. By close examination of 21 children's single sessions, and the 163 iconic gestures they produced (a mean of 7.6…

Preschoolers' understanding that an object can be accurately described using two different non-synonymous words was investigated using a task in which children (N=36) had to judge which of two animals had provided correct adjectival labels for a series of pictures. For some pictures, only one animal provided a correct adjective, for some both…

This investigation tracked changes in categorical bias (i.e., placing objects belonging to the same spatial group closer together than they really are) while 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults were learning a set of locations. Participants learned the locations of 20 objects marked by dots on the floor of an open square box divided into…

The voluntary and reflexive orienting abilities of persons with Down syndrome and fragile X syndrome, at average MA levels of approximately 4 and 7 years, were compared with an RT task. Reflexive orienting abilities appeared to develop in accordance with MA for the participants with Down syndrome but not for those with fragile X syndrome. However,…

This study examined the independence and interplay between cognitive risk factors (poor executive function/emotion understanding) and maternal risk factors (low education/high depression) for preschool problem behaviors, indexed by multi-measure, multi-informant (mother/teacher/ researcher) ratings. A socio-economically diverse sample of 235…

We investigate how L1 phonology and semantics affect processing of interlingual homographs by manipulating language context before, and auditory input during, a visual experiment in the L2. Three experiments contained German-English homograph primes ("gift" = German "poison") in English sentences and was performed by German (L1) learners of…

Bilinguals spontaneously switch languages in conversation even though laboratory studies reveal robust cued language switching costs. The authors investigated how voluntary-switching costs might differ when switches are voluntary. Younger (Experiments 1-2) and older (Experiment 3) Spanish-English bilinguals named pictures in 3 conditions: (a)…

Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the hand area of the left primary motor cortex or, as a control, to the vertex (STIMULATION: TMS[subscript M1] vs. TMS[subscript vertex]) while right-handed volunteers silently read verbs related to hand actions. We examined three different tasks and time points for stimulation…

Under many conditions auditory input interferes with visual processing, especially early in development. These interference effects are often more pronounced when the auditory input is unfamiliar than when the auditory input is familiar (e.g. human speech, pre-familiarized sounds, etc.). The current study extends this research by examining how…

This study examines the working memory systems involved in human wayfinding. In the learning phase, 24 participants learned two routes in a novel photorealistic virtual environment displayed on a 220 degrees screen while they were disrupted by a visual, a spatial, a verbal, or--in a control group--no secondary task. In the following wayfinding…

According to the mental-state reasoning model of suggestibility, 2 components of theory of mind mediate reductions in suggestibility across the preschool years. The authors examined whether theory-of-mind performance may be legitimately separated into 2 components and explored the memory processes underlying the associations between theory of mind…

It has been a matter of debate whether the specifically human capacity to process syntactic information draws on attentional resources or is automatic. To address this issue, we recorded neurophysiological indicators of syntactic processing to spoken sentences while subjects were distracted to different degrees from language processing. Subjects…