The authors examined the effects of a task-irrelevant sound on visual processing. Participants were presented with revolving clocks at or around central fixation and reported the hand position of a target clock at the time an exogenous cue (1 clock turning red) or an endogenous cue (a line pointing toward 1 of the clocks) was presented. A…

Jean Piaget's theory is a central reference point in the study of logico-mathematical development in children. One of the most famous Piagetian tasks is number conservation. Failures and successes in this task reveal two fundamental stages in children's thinking and judgment, shifting at approximately 7 years of age from visuospatial intuition to…

Most research on gestures (especially in the field of Mathematics Education) has focused on gestures in communication with others. In contrast, here, we focus on gestures which are not directed at others, but which we assume accompany inner speech or embodied thought, such as the gesticulation one makes by touching one's fingers whilst silently…

Functional imaging studies have established cortical networks for reading alphabetic, syllabic and logographic scripts. There is little information about the different cortical areas that participate in reading an alphasyllabary. We use functional brain imaging to study the reading network for Devanagari, an alphasyllabary. Similar to syllabic…

Converging behavioral and neural evidence suggests that numerical representations are mentally organized in left-to-right orientation. Here we show that this format of spatial organization extends to emotional expression. In Experiment 1, right-side responses became increasingly faster as number (represented by Arabic numerals) or happiness…

Interlimb transfer of motor learning, indicating an improvement in performance with one limb following training with the other, often occurs asymmetrically (i.e., from non-dominant to dominant limb or vice versa, but not both). In the present study, we examined whether interlimb transfer of the same motor task could occur asymmetrically and in…

Spatial skills are a central component of intellect and show marked individual differences. There is evidence that variations in the spatial language young children hear, which directs their attention to important aspects of the spatial environment, may be one of the mechanisms that contributes to these differences. To investigate how play affects…

The texts that adolescents encounter today are often multimodal, meaning they incorporate a variety of modes, including visual images, hypertext, and graphic design elements along with written text. Expanding the perspectives readers use to make sense of the multimodal texts is an important aspect of comprehension instruction. Moving beyond the…

The concept of property is integral to personal and societal development, yet understanding of the cognitive basis of ownership is limited. Objects are the most basic form of property, so our physical interactions with owned objects may elucidate nuanced aspects of ownership. We gave participants a coffee mug to decorate, use and keep. The…

The present study examined a visual field asymmetry in the contingent capture of attention that was previously observed by Du and Abrams (2010). In our first experiment, color singleton distractors that matched the color of a to-be-detected target produced a stronger capture of attention when they appeared in the left visual hemifield than in the…

Transcription of genes required for long-term memory not only involves transcription factors, but also enzymatic protein complexes that modify chromatin structure. Chromatin-modifying enzymes, such as the histone acetyltransferase (HAT) CREB (cyclic-AMP response element binding) binding protein (CBP), are pivotal for the transcriptional regulation…

Recently, the use of stereoscopic three-dimensional (3-D) projection displays has increased in geoscience education. One concern in employing 3-D projection systems in large lecture halls, however, is that the 3-D effect is reported to diminish with increased angle and distance from the stereoscopic display. The goal of this work was to study that…

We investigated how humans encode large-scale spatial environments using a virtual taxi game. We hypothesized that if 2 connected neighborhoods are explored jointly, people will form a single integrated spatial representation of the town. However, if the neighborhoods are first learned separately and later observed to be connected, people will…

Neurocognitive processes such as executive functioning (EF) may influence the development of speech-language skills in deaf children after cochlear implantation in ways that differ from normal-hearing, typically developing children. Conversely, spoken language abilities and experiences may also exert reciprocal effects on the development of EF.…

Four experiments examined the roles of extended surfaces and the number of points in the boundary superiority effect in goal localization. Participants learned the locations of 4 objects in the presence of a boundary, landmarks, or both in an immersive virtual environment by reproducing the locations with feedback. Participants then localized the…