Previous studies on value-driven attentional capture (VDAC) have demonstrated that the uncertainty of reward value modulates attentional allocation via associative learning. However, it is unclear whether such attentional exploration is executed based on the amount of potential reward information available for refining value prediction or the…

Existing approaches in the literature on cognitive control in conflict tasks almost exclusively target the outcome of control (by comparing mean congruency effects) and not the processes that shape control. These approaches are limited in addressing a current theoretical issue--what contribution does learning make to adjustments in cognitive…

Purpose: The study examined age-related differences in the use of semantic context and in the effect of semantic competition in spoken sentence processing. We used offline (response latency) and online (eye gaze) measures, using the "visual world" eye-tracking paradigm. Method: Thirty younger and 30 older adults heard sentences related…

Research Findings: The study investigated whether preschool code-related home literacy experiences had direct associations with regular and irregular word reading in the first year of primary school as well as exploring whether there were indirect associations between these experiences and later word reading via children's language skills or…

Understanding the role of negative emotionality in the development of executive functioning (EF) and language skills can help identify developmental windows that may provide promising opportunities for intervention. In addition, because EF and language skills are, in part, genetically influenced, intergenerational transmission patterns are…

The purpose of this study was to examine what components of executive function (EF)--inhibition, shifting and updating/working memory--predict reading comprehension in young adults. Ninety university students (65 females, 25 males; mean age = 21.82 years) were assessed on shifting (Planned Connections and Colour/Shape Shifting), inhibition…

One approach to understanding working memory (WM) holds that individual differences in WM capacity arise from the amount of information a person can store in WM over short periods of time. This view is especially prevalent in WM research conducted with the visual arrays task. Within this tradition, many researchers have concluded that the average…

In many task-switch studies, task sequence and response sequence interact: Response repetitions produce benefits when the task repeats but produce costs when the task switches. Four different theoretical frameworks have been proposed to explain these effects: a reconfiguration-based account, association-learning models, an episodic-retrieval…

Participants studied category-exemplar pairs ("FRUIT Cherry," "FRUIT Grape") and then practiced some of the items ("Cherry"). In Experiment 1, practice that involved retrieving the item from memory suppressed recall of related items ("Grape"), a finding known as the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) effect.…

Two experiments examined the relations among working memory capacity (WMC), congruency-sequence effects, proportion-congruency effects, and the color-word Stroop effect to test whether congruency-sequence effects might inform theoretical claims regarding WMC's prediction of Stroop interference. In Experiment 1, subjects completed either a…

In 7 experiments, we explored the role of retrieval in associative updating, that is, in incorporating new information into an associative memory. We tested the hypothesis that retrieval would facilitate incorporating a new contextual detail into a learned association. Participants learned 3 pieces of information--a person's face, name, and…

Load theory predicts that concurrent cognitive load impairs selective attention. For visual stimuli, it has been shown that this impairment can be selective: Distraction was specifically increased when the stimulus material used in the cognitive load task matches that of the selective attention task. Here, we report four experiments that…