The contents of working memory (WM) have predominantly been viewed as necessarily conscious. However, recent findings suggest otherwise. Here we investigate whether visual WM can represent subliminal stimuli, such that the positions of an invisible moving object can be extrapolated or learned about in terms of their task-relevant predictive power.…

A salient stimulus may interrupt visual search because of attentional capture. It has been shown that attentional capture occurs with a wide, but not with a small attentional window. We tested the hypothesis that capture depends more strongly on the shape of the attentional window than on its size. Search elements were arranged in two nested…

Light is the origin of vision. The pattern of shading reflected from object surfaces is one of several optical features that provide fundamental information about shape and surface orientation. To understand how surface and object shading is processed by birds, six pigeons were tested with differentially illuminated convex and concave curved…

This paper examines the upper-limb movement kinematics of young children (3-7 years) with high-functioning autism using a point-to-point movement paradigm. Consistent with prior findings in older children, a difference in movement preparation was found in the autism group (n = 11) relative to typically developing children. In contrast to typically…

This article attempts to bring to the fore of educational practice the importance of considering the visual-perceptual condition of Meares-Irlen syndrome (MIS) when identifying students who have prolonged reading difficulties. Dyslexia is a frequently used term which can be used to label children who have specific difficulties with reading and/or…

Selective attention requires the ability to focus on relevant information and to ignore irrelevant information. The ability to inhibit irrelevant information has been proposed to be the main source of age-related cognitive change (e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1988). Although age-related distraction by irrelevant information has been extensively…

Recent studies show that emotional stimuli impair performance to subsequently presented neutral stimuli. Here we show a cross-modal perceptual enhancement caused by emotional cues. Auditory cue words were followed by a visually presented neutral target word. Two-alternative forced-choice identification of the visual target was improved by…

Recent work on event perception suggests that perceptual processing increases when events change. An important question is how such changes influence the way other information is processed, particularly during dual-task performance. In this study, participants monitored a long series of distractor items for an occasional target as they…

Objective: The goal of the present study was to examine distributed attentional functions in long-term but currently abstinent methamphetamine (MA) abusers using a task that measures attentional alertness, orienting, and conflict resolution. Methods: Thirty currently abstinent MA abusers (1 month-5 years) and 22 healthy non-substance using adults…

Plaisted, O'Riordan and colleagues (Plaisted, O'Riordan & Baron-Cohen, 1998; O'Riordan, 2004) showed that school-age children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are faster at finding targets in certain types of visual search tasks than typical controls. Currently though, there is very little known about the visual search skills of very…

We propose a multisensory framework based on Glaser and Glaser's (1989) general reading-naming interference model to account for the semantic priming effect by naturalistic sounds and spoken words on visual picture sensitivity. Four experiments were designed to investigate two key issues: First, can auditory stimuli enhance visual sensitivity when…

Individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HF-ASD) often show superior performance in simple visual tasks, despite difficulties in the perception of socially important information such as facial expression. The neural basis of visual perception abnormalities associated with HF-ASD is currently unclear. We sought to elucidate the…

Background: Research into the neuropsychology of pediatric obsessive--compulsive disorder (OCD) reveals inconsistent results, limiting the ability to draw conclusions about possible neurocognitive deficits in youth with OCD. The aim of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis of the available literature. Methods: We identified 36 studies, of…

Can people make perfect use of task-relevant information in working memory (WM)? Specifically, when questioned about an item in an array that does not happen to be in WM, can participants take into account other items that are in WM, eliminating them as response candidates? To address this question, an ideal-responder model that assumes perfect…

It has been shown that the left and right cerebral hemispheres (LH and RH) respectively process qualitative or "categorical" spatial relations and metric or "coordinate" spatial relations. However, categorical spatial information could be thought as divided into two types: semantically-coded and visuospatially-coded categorical information. We…