Environmental perception is prerequisite to most vertebrate behavior and its modern investigation initiated the founding of experimental psychology. Navigation costs may affect environmental perception, such as overestimating distances while encumbered (Solomon, 1949). However, little is known about how this occurs in real-world navigation or how…

The effect of the visual hemifield to which spatial attention was oriented on the activities of the posterior parietal and occipital visual cortices was examined using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in order to investigate the neural substrates of voluntary visuospatial attention. Our brain imaging data support the theory put forth in a…

A sophisticated form of nonelemental learning is provided by occasion setting. In this paradigm, animals learn to disambiguate an uncertain conditioned stimulus using alternative stimuli that do not enter into direct association with the unconditioned stimulus. For instance, animals may learn to discriminate odor rewarded from odor nonrewarded…

An accurate sense of time contributes to functions ranging from the perception and anticipation of sensory events to the production of coordinated movements. However, accumulating evidence demonstrates that time perception is subject to strong illusory distortion. In two experiments, we investigated whether the subjective speed of temporal…

In foreign accent syndrome (FAS), changes in articulation and prosody cause listeners to perceive the speaker as "foreign-sounding." Fewer than 100 cases of FAS have been described in the literature; commonly associated with brain damage, only a handful of these have been analyzed with respect to acoustic measures. Acoustic and…

Research examining the importance of surface-level information to familiarity in recognition memory tasks is mixed: Sometimes it affects recognition and sometimes it does not. One potential explanation of the inconsistent findings comes from the ideas of dual process theory of recognition and the transfer-appropriate processing framework, which…

It is well established that a task-irrelevant sound (deviant sound) departing from an otherwise repetitive sequence of sounds (standard sounds) elicits an involuntary capture of attention and orienting response toward the deviant stimulus, resulting in the lengthening of response times in an ongoing task. Some have argued that this type of…

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems often supplement oral communication for individuals with intellectual and communication disabilities. Research with preschoolers without disabilities has demonstrated that two visual--perceptual factors influence speed and/or accuracy of finding a target: the internal color and spatial…

This study explored the developmental trends and phonetic category formation in bilingual children and adults. Participants included 30 fluent Spanish-English bilingual children, aged 8-11, and bilingual adults, aged 18-40. All completed gating tasks that incorporated code-mixed Spanish-English stimuli. There were significant differences in…

Sensitivity to spacing information within faces improves with age and reaches maturity only at adolescence. In this study, we tested 6-16-year-old children's sensitivity to vertical spacing when the eyes or the mouth is the facial feature selectively manipulated. Despite the similar discriminability of these manipulations when they are embedded in…

This study examines existing research in the field of language learning advising (LLA) with the aim of establishing a professional validation framework which can inform the development of a systematic and structured preparation of language learning advisers with appropriate associated authority. The role of language learning advisers emerged about…

Visual stress (the experience of visual distortions and discomfort during prolonged reading) is frequently identified and alleviated with coloured overlays or lenses. Previous studies have associated visual stress with dyslexia and as a consequence, coloured overlays are widely distributed to children and adults with reading difficulty. However,…

This study seeks to understand boys' lower academic success by analysing the relationship between sex, gender role self-concept, help seeking attitudes, and school performance in a sample of 182 German 11th grade students (83 girls, 99 boys), age 16. Grades at two points in time, intelligence test data, help-seeking attitudes, gender role…

Complex problem solving is often an integration of perceptual processing and deliberate planning. But what balances these two processes, and how do novices differ from experts? We investigate the interplay between these two in the game of SET. This article investigates how people combine bottom-up visual processes and top-down planning to succeed…

This study evaluated the impact of a computerized visuospatial memory training intervention on the memory and behavioral skills of children with Down syndrome. Teaching assistants were trained to support the delivery of a computerized intervention program to individual children over a 10-16 week period in school. Twenty-one children aged 7-12…