In order to extend the multicultural horizons of neuropsychological assessment in the Chinese mainland, a battery of eight commonly used neurocognitive tests assessing motor speed, verbal and visual-spatial memory, language fluency, attention, and executive functioning were given to 224 Mandarin-speaking school children (107 boys and 117 girls)…

Learning about mathematics begins in the early years. Through their everyday activities, young children build important foundational knowledge and understanding of mathematics, especially when adults provide specific opportunities to learn and practice concepts and skills. Young children develop early on an informal understanding of important…

The linguistic and cognitive profiles of five deaf adults with a sign language disorder were compared with those of matched deaf controls. The test involved a battery of sign language tests, a signed narrative discourse task and a neuropsychological test protocol administered in sign language. Spatial syntax and facial processing were examined in…

Middle school teachers realize the value of students playing games in mathematics classes if those games emphasize problem-solving strategies, algebraic reasoning, or spatial sense. This article describes various versions of the traditional game of nim and shows how working backward can be used to find a winning strategy. The link is then made…

Students identified by talent search programs were studied to determine whether spatial ability could uncover math-science promise. In Phase 1, interests and values of intellectually talented adolescents (617 boys, 443 girls) were compared with those of top math-science graduate students (368 men, 346 women) as a function of their standing on…

Spatial ability based on measures of mental rotation, and spatial experience based on self-reported participation in visual-arts as well as spatial-orientation activities were assessed in a sample of 337 Chinese, gifted students. Consistent with past findings for the general population, there were gender differences in spatial ability favoring…

Human cognition is founded, in part, on four systems for representing objects, actions, number, and space. It may be based, as well, on a fifth system for representing social partners. Each system has deep roots in human phylogeny and ontogeny, and it guides and shapes the mental lives of adults. Converging research on human infants, non-human…

Two important components of skill learning are the learning process itself (motor acquisition) and the ability to transfer what has been learned to new task variants (motor transfer). Many studies have documented age-related declines in the ability to learn new manual motor skills. In this study, I tested whether the degree of savings at transfer…

Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm with the boundary placed after word n, the experiment manipulated preview of word n + 2 for fixations on word n. There was no preview benefit for 1st-pass reading on word n + 2, replicating the results of K. Rayner, B. J. Juhasz, and S. J. Brown (2007), but there was a preview benefit on the 3-letter…

This study investigated the role that visual tracking plays in coupling rhythmic limb movements to an environmental rhythm. Two experiments were conducted in which participants swung a hand-held pendulum while tracking an oscillating stimulus or while keeping their eyes fixed on a stationary location directly above an oscillating stimulus. It…

Duplications of chromosome 15 may be one of the most common single genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), aside from fragile X. Most of the cases are associated with maternally derived interstitial duplication involving 15q11-13. This case report describes a female proband with a maternally derived interstitial duplication of proximal…

The authors investigated the performance of 172 Grade 4 students (9 to 10 years) over 12 months on a 36-item test that comprised items from 6 distinct graphical languages (e.g., maps) commonly used to convey mathematical information. Results revealed (a) difficulties in Grade 4 students' capacity to decode a variety of graphics, (b) significant…

The purpose of the present study is to explain variation in academic achievement with general cognitive ability and specific cognitive abilities. Grade point average, Wide Range Achievement Test III scores, and SAT scores represented academic achievement. The specific cognitive abilities of interest were: working memory, processing speed, and…

From birth, infants prefer to look at faces that engage them in direct eye contact. In adults, direct gaze is known to modulate the processing of faces, including the recognition of individuals. In the present study, we investigate whether direction of gaze has any effect on face recognition in four-month-old infants. Four-month infants were shown…

Applying Bloch's law to visual word recognition research, both exposure duration of the prime and its luminance determine the prime's overall energy, and consequently determine the size of the priming effect. Nevertheless, experimenters using fast-priming paradigms traditionally focus only on the SOA between prime and target to reflect the…