Lateralization of the brain is strongly influenced by prenatal androgens, with differential exposure thought to account for cognitive sex differences. This study investigated sex and individual differences and relationships between 2D:4D (the ratio of the 2nd to 4th digit [digit ratio] as a proxy indicator of prenatal testosterone exposure),…

The reduced verbal long-term memory capacities often reported in dyslexics are generally interpreted as a consequence of their deficit in phonological coding. The present study was aimed at evaluating whether the learning deficit exhibited by dyslexics was restricted only to the verbal component of the long-term memory abilities or also involved…

Phonological skills are foundational of reading acquisition and impaired phonological processing is widely assumed to characterize dyslexic individuals. However, reading by phonological decoding also requires rapid selection of sublexical orthographic units through serial attentional orienting, and recent studies have shown that visual spatial…

Decision-making is central to human cognition. Fundamental to every decision is the ability to internally represent the available choices and their relative costs and benefits. The most basic and frequent decisions we make occur as our motor system chooses and executes only those actions that achieve our current goals. Although these interactions…

Here, we examined the effect of a daytime nap on changes in virtual maze performance across a single day. Participants either took a short nap or remained awake following training on a virtual maze task. Post-training sleep provided a clear performance benefit at later retest, but only for those participants with prior experience navigating in a…

The dual-stage two-phase (DSTP) model is introduced as a formal and general model of selective attention that includes both an early and a late stage of stimulus selection. Whereas at the early stage information is selected by perceptual filters whose selectivity is relatively limited, at the late stage stimuli are selected more efficiently on a…

Although in traditional attention research the focus of visual spatial attention has been considered as indivisible, many studies in the last 15 years have claimed the contrary. These studies suggest that humans can direct their attention simultaneously to multiple noncontiguous regions of the visual field upon mere instruction. The notion that…

Finding an object in our environment is an important human ability that also represents a critical component of human foraging behavior. One type of information that aids efficient large-scale search is the likelihood of the object being in one location over another. In this study we investigated the conditions under which individuals respond to…

It has been suggested that learning an object's location relative to (1) intramaze landmarks and (2) local boundaries is supported by parallel striatal and hippocampal systems, both of which rely upon input from a third system for orientation. However, little is known about the developmental trajectories of these systems' contributions to spatial…

A difference in the perception of extrapersonal space has been shown to exist between dextrals and sinistrals. On the classical line bisection task, this difference is evident in a greater left bias for dextrals compared to sinistrals. Different modalities and regions of space can be affected. However, it has not yet been investigated whether a…

It is commonly assumed that there is an interaction between the representations of number and space (e.g., [Dehaene et al., 1993] and [Walsh, 2003]), typically ascribed to a mental number line. The exact nature of this interaction has remained elusive, however. Here we propose that spatial aspects are not inherent to number representations, but…

Research Findings: The present study evaluated the impact of a working memory (WM) stimulation program on the development of WM and early literacy skills (ELS) in preschoolers from socioeconomically deprived rural and urban schools in Chile. The sample consisted of 268 children, 144 in the intervention group and 124 in the comparison group. The…

Preschoolers' metalinguistic and visual capabilities may be associated with the writing system of their culture. We examined patterns of performance in phonological awareness, naming of letters, morphological awareness, and visual-spatial relations, in 5-year-old native speakers of Spanish (n = 43), Hebrew (n = 40), and Cantonese (n = 63) and the…

The seminal work of Prensky on "digital natives" and "digital wisdom" is used to launch a broader discussion on the relations between electronic communication, higher education, and popular and elite culture. Prensky's critics commonly contrast his polarisations and generational divisions with a more complex picture of types of engagement with…

This article introduces the development and validation of the spatial thinking ability test (STAT). The STAT consists of sixteen multiple-choice questions of eight types. The STAT was validated by administering it to a sample of 532 junior high, high school, and university students. Factor analysis using principal components extraction was applied…