Visuospatial processing speed underlies several cognitive functions critical for successful completion of everyday tasks, including driving and walking. While it is widely accepted that visuospatial processing speed peaks in early adulthood, performance across the lifespan remains incompletely characterized. Additionally, there remains a lack of…

Stimulus over-selectivity is said to have occurred when only a limited subset of the total number of stimuli present during discrimination learning controls behavior, thus, restricting learning about the range, breadth, or all features of a stimulus. The current study investigated over-selectivity of 100 typically developing children, aged 3-7…

Humans and other animals are able to make rough estimations of quantities using what has been termed the "approximate number system" (ANS). Much evidence suggests that sensitivity to numerosity correlates with symbolic math capacity, leading to the suggestion that the ANS may serve as a start-up tool to develop symbolic math. Many…

Most tasks test memory within the same day, however, most forgetting occurs after 24 h. Further, testing memory for simple words or objects does not mimic real-world memory experiences. We designed a memory task showing participants video clips of everyday kinds of experiences, including positive, negative, and neutral stimuli, and tested memory…

Studies showed that individual differences in encoding speed as well as looking behaviour during the encoding of facial stimuli can relate to differences in subsequent face discrimination. Nevertheless, a direct linkage between encoding speed and looking behaviour during the encoding of facial stimuli and the role of these encoding characteristics…

Enhanced low-level perception, although present in individuals with autism, is not seen in individuals with high, but non-clinical, levels of autistic traits (Brock et al.in "Percept Lond" 40(6):739. doi:10.1068/p6953, 2011). This is surprising, as many of the higher-level visual differences found in autism have been shown to correlate…

Visual word N170 is an index of perceptual expertise for visual words across different writing systems. Recent developmental studies have shown the early emergence of visual word N170 and its close association with individual's reading ability. In the current study, we investigated whether fine-tuning N170 for Chinese characters could emerge after…

Hippocampal-dependent episodic memory and stimulus discrimination abilities are both compromised in the elderly. The reduced capacity to discriminate between similar stimuli likely contributes to multiple aspects of age-related cognitive impairment; however, the association of these behaviors within individuals has never been examined in an animal…

The current investigation evaluated repertoires that may be related to performance on auditory-to-visual conditional discrimination training with 9 students who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The skills included in the assessment were matching, imitation, scanning, an auditory discrimination, and a visual discrimination. The…

By virtue of its frontal and hippocampal connections, the retrosplenial cortex is uniquely placed to support cognition. Here, we tested whether the retrosplenial cortex is required for frontal tasks analogous to the Stroop Test, i.e., for the ability to select between conflicting responses and inhibit responding to task-irrelevant cues. Rats first…

We used eye-tracking to investigate the roles of enhanced discrimination and peripheral selection in superior visual search in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children with ASD were faster at visual search than their typically developing peers. However, group differences in performance and eye-movements did not vary with the level of difficulty of…

Perceptual processing in autism is associated with both "strengths" and "weaknesses" but within a literature that varies widely in terms of the assessments used. We report data from 12 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 12 age and IQ matched neurotypical controls tested on a set of tasks using the same stimuli…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders are often considered to have difficulty with using facial cues (e.g., cues from the eye region) to understand others' mental states. One of the pioneering assessments to test competence in this skill is the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes-Test" (RMET). In order to find out more about the…

From very early in life, humans can approximate the number and surface area of objects in a scene. The ability to discriminate between 2 approximate quantities, whether number or area, critically depends on the ratio between the quantities, with the most difficult ratio that a participant can reliably discriminate known as the Weber fraction.…

Statistical learning is characterized by detection of regularities in one's environment without an awareness or intention to learn, and it may play a critical role in language and social behavior. Accordingly, in this study we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of visual statistical learning in young children with autism…