The unrehearsed performance of music, called "sight-reading" (SR), is a basic skill for all musicians. It is of particular interest for musical occupations such as the piano accompanist, the conductor, or the correpetiteur. However, up until now, there is no theory of SR which considers all relevant factors such as practice-related…

Background: Individuals with Down syndrome consistently perform less well than appropriately matched comparison groups on tests of verbal short-term memory, despite performing relatively well on non-verbal short-term memory tasks. However, it is not clear whether these findings constitute evidence for a selective deficit in verbal short-term…

Objective: Catecholamine stimulant drugs are highly efficacious treatments for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders (AD/HD). Catecholamine modulation in humans influences performance of numerous cognitive tasks, including tests of attention and working memory (WM). Clear delineation of the effects of methylphenidate upon such cognitive…

The longitudinal interrelations among age, visual and auditory short-term memory, and the concrete operational tasks of class inclusion and combinatorial reasoning were investigated over four testing occasions in a sample of 134 students, initially ranging from 5 to 12 years in age. The Piagetian task battery involved placement of colored…

This paper reports a study contrasting dyslexic children against a control group of children without special educational needs (SEN) and a group with varied SENs. Children's abilities were compared on tasks assessing phonological processing, visuo-spatial/motor coordination and executive/inhibitory functioning; being targeted for assessment based…