Why do people with right hemisphere damage (RHD) have difficulty with pragmatics and communication? One hypothesis has been that pragmatic impairment in RHD is the result of an underlying impairment in Theory of Mind (ToM): the ability to infer the mental states of others. In previous studies evaluating ToM abilities in people with RHD,…

Response preparation usually facilitates performance, but it may also interfere with other concurrent tasks. In this article, the authors used event-related brain potentials to study how intervening tasks affect response preparation. In 3 experiments, participants performed intervening tasks during the preparation of a precued hand choice…

Aim: Mutations in the "SLC16A2" gene have been implicated in Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome (AHDS), an X-linked learning disability syndrome associated with thyroid function test (TFT) abnormalities. Delayed myelination is a non-specific finding in individuals with learning disability whose genetic basis is often uncertain. The aim of this study…

Brain aging has been associated with both reduced and increased neural activity during task execution. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether increased neural activation during memory encoding and retrieval is already present at the age of 60 as well as to obtain more insight into the mechanism behind increased activity.…

There is a growing body of research that provides evidence that today's late adolescents and college-age students have been affected in many ways, some adversely, by growing up in the ever-increasing technology-driven world--one in which they have been living, playing and communicating. The purpose of this article is to present recent research…

Investigating spatial cognition in individuals with acquired language impairments can inform our understanding of how components of language are involved in spatial representation. Using the reorientation paradigm of Hermer-Vazquez, Spelke, and Katsnelson (1999), we examined spatial cue integration (landmark-geometry conjunctions) in individuals…

Progressive developments in scanning technologies over the last decade have led to a surge of new research into the structure and function of the brain and into differences between the brains of teenagers and other adults. This work has not been free of controversy, notably around the question of deficits in the capacity of young people concerning…

Background: Progressive myelination during adolescence implicates an increased vulnerability to neurotoxic substances and enduring neurocognitive consequences. This study examined the cognitive manifestations of altered white matter microstructure in chronic marijuana and alcohol-using (MJ + ALC) adolescents. Methods: Thirty-six MJ + ALC…

Aim: To investigate the predictive value of motor testing at 1 year for motor and mental outcome at 2 years after perinatal hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) in term neonates. Method: Motor and mental outcome at 2 years was assessed with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 2nd edition (BSID-II) in 32 surviving children (20 males, 12…

Knowledge about the functional status of the frontal cortex in infancy is limited. This study investigated the effects of polymorphisms in four dopamine system genes on performance in a task developed to assess such functioning, the Freeze-Frame task, at 9 months of age. Polymorphisms in the catechol-O-methyltransferase ("COMT") and the…

This article draws on critical disability studies, challenging the exclusion of right-brained thinkers from an education system designed to privilege left-brained thinkers. It focuses on individuals who are labelled dyspraxic, providing data from qualitative interviews with adults about childhood experiences in school and the impact on their…

This article explores the cerebral mechanism of reading aloud activities in L2 learners. These activities have been widely used in L2 learning and teaching, and its effect has been reported in various Asian L2 learning contexts. However, the reasons for its effectiveness have not been examined. In order to fill in this gap, two studies using a…

In recent years, some researchers have proposed that a fundamental component of the word recognition process is that each fovea is divided precisely at its vertical midline and that information either side of this midline projects to different, contralateral hemispheres. Thus, when a word is fixated, all letters to the left of the point of…

Vision researchers have investigated the differences between global and local feature perception. No one has, however, examined the role of global and local feature discrimination in sustained attention tasks. In this experiment participants performed a sustained attention task requiring either global or local letter target discriminations or…

Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies have revealed that faces and words show a robust difference in the lateralization of their N170. The present study investigated the development of this differential lateralization in school-age boys. We assessed the potential role of fetal testosterone (FT) level as a factor biasing the prenatal…