The spatial knowledge of 18 children with spina bifida and 18 healthy control children (matched according to sex, age, and verbal IQ) was investigated in a computer-simulated environment. All children had to learn a route through a virtual floor system containing 18 landmarks. Controlling for cognitive abilities, the results revealed that children…

Studies of neurological patients with category-specific agnosia have provided important contributions to our understanding of object recognition, although the meaning of such disorders is still hotly debated. One crucial line of research for our understanding of category effects, is through the examination of category biases in healthy normal…

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder that results in severe visual-spatial cognitive deficits coupled with relative sparing in language, face recognition, and certain aspects of motion processing. Here, we look for evidence for sparing or impairment in another cognitive system--object recognition. Children with WS, normal mental-age…

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate how cognitive and measurement principles can be integrated to create an essentially unidimensional test. Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, test questions were created by using the feature integration theory of attention to develop a cognitive model of performance and then manipulating complexity…

"The Mozart effect" originally referred to the phenomenon of a brief enhancement of spatial-temporal abilities in college students after listening to a Mozart piano sonata (K. 448). Over time, this term was conflated with an independent series of studies on the effects of music instruction. This occurrence has caused confusion that has been…

Humans see whole objects from input fragmented in space and time, yet spatiotemporal object perception is poorly understood. The authors propose the theory of spatiotemporal relatability (STR), which describes the visual information and processes that allow visible fragments revealed at different times and places, due to motion and occlusion, to…

The present study examined spatial learning in goldfish using a new apparatus that was an open-field circular pool with latticed holes. The subjects were motivated to reach the baited hole. We examined gustatory cues, intramaze cues, the possibility that the subject could see the food, etc. In Experiment 1, the position of the baited hole was…

The detection or discrimination of the second of 2 targets in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task is often temporarily impaired-a phenomenon termed the attentional blink. This study demonstrated that the attentional blink also affects localization performance. Spatial cues pointed out the possible target positions in a subsequent visual…

Semantic influences on attention during the 1st fixation on a scene were explored in 3 experiments. Subjects viewed briefly presented scenes; following scene presentation, a spatial probe was presented at the location of an object whose identity was consistent or inconsistent with the scene category. Responses to the probe served as an index of…

Two experiments were conducted to determine the mechanism underlying the spacing effect in free-recall tasks. Participants were required to study a list containing once-presented words as well as massed and spaced repetitions. In both experiments, presentation background at repetition was manipulated. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that…

The article describes a case study of children and young people's participation and the attendant effects on professional practice and child-adult relations. The authors consider the findings under four headings: professional learning, child-adult relations, childhood memories and the spatial dimensions of change. Evidence indicates that adults…

A visual short-term memory task was more strongly disrupted by visual than spatial interference, and a spatial memory task was simultaneously more strongly disrupted by spatial than visual interference. This double dissociation supports a fractionation of visuospatial short-term memory into separate visual and spatial components. In 6 experiments,…

Findings from a prospective longitudinal study of math disability (MD) addressed its incidence during primary school, the utility of different MD definitions, and evidence of MD subtypes. Findings indicated only 22 of 209 participants demonstrated "persistent MD"; reading disability was more frequent in this group; and reading related skills and…

Map-guided wayfinding requires updating the map-space relation whenever we turn. In 3 studies, children used a map to follow a path with two 90 degree turns. Although carrying the map, children rarely physically adjusted the map after turns. They performed well when the map was aligned with the space (on the 1st and 3rd legs), and they performed…

Several investigations have shown that young infants perceive the unity of a center-occluded object when the visible ends of the object undergo common motion but not when the object remains stationary. This study is an extension of earlier investigations on object unity in that it assesses amodal completion of stationary circles in which one half…