It has been hypothesised that autism is an extreme version of the male brain, caused by high levels of prenatal testosterone (Baron-Cohen 1999). To test this proposal, associations were assessed between three visuo-spatial tasks and prenatal testosterone, indexed in second-to-fourth digit length ratios (2D:4D). The study included children with…

The 3D cube figures used by Shepard and Metzler [Shepard, R. N., & Metzler, J. (1971). "Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects." "Science," 171, 701-703] have been applied in a broad range of studies on mental rotation. This note provides a brief background on these figures, their general use in cognitive psychology and their role in…

The cognitive underpinnings of arithmetic calculation in children are noted to involve working memory; however, cognitive processes related to arithmetic calculation and working memory suggest that this relationship is more complex than stated previously. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the relative contributions of processing…

We examined in detail effects of priming in 2 mental rotation strategies: spinning (rotating in a picture plane) and flipping (rotating in depth around a horizontal axis) by using a priming paradigm of Kanamori and Yagi (2002). The priming paradigm included prime and probe tasks within 1 trial. In the prime task, 16 participants were asked to…

Emerging research supports the contribution of executive function (EF) to reading comprehension; however, a unique pattern has not been established for children who demonstrate comprehension difficulties despite average word recognition ability (specific reading comprehension deficit; S-RCD). To identify particular EF components on which children…

In the field of learning and instruction, feedback is considered an elementary component for supporting and regulating learning processes. Feedback plays a particularly important role in highly self-regulated model-centered learning environments because it facilitates the development of mental models, thus improving expertise and expert…

Objective: The goal of this study was to contrast the cognitive phenotypes in boys with 47,XYY (XYY) karyotype and boys with 47,XXY karyotype [Klinefelter syndrome, (KS)], who share an extra copy of the X-Y pseudoautosomal region but differ in their dosage of strictly sex-linked genes. Methods: Neuropsychological evaluation of general cognitive…

Cumulative exposure to glucocorticoid hormones (GC) over the lifespan has been associated with cognitive impairment and may contribute to physical and cognitive degeneration in aging. The objective of the present study was to examine whether the pattern of cognitive deficits in patients with Cushing's syndrome (CS), a disorder characterized by…

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and Central Europe, cartographers were faced with choices on how the new post-Cold War political landscape would be mapped. One such group called the Pluto Project had been producing atlases since 1981 with a progressive point of view about the nature of state power…

In this study, the author aimed at measuring how much limited working memory capacity constrains early numerical development before any formal mathematics instruction. To that end, 4- and 5-year-old children were tested for their memory skills in the phonological loop (PL), visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSSP), and central executive (CE); they also…

Little is known about the impact of terrorism on children's cognitive functioning and school learning. The primary purpose of this study was to report on cognitive functioning among school-age children 20 months after a terrorist attack against their school. Participants included 203 directly and indirectly exposed children from Beslan and 100…

Previous studies with adult human participants revealed that motor activities can influence mental rotation of body parts and abstract shapes. In this study, we investigated the influence of a rotational hand movement on mental rotation performance from a developmental perspective. Children at the age of 5, 8, and 11 years and adults performed a…

David E. Kirkland argues that our understanding of literate practice in relation to space needs to be radically reworked to account for new digital dimensions that are dispersed, discontinuous, and yet deeply woven into everyday and institutional worlds. His account highlights the way these digital spaces pepper the official landscape of…

In the exciting, "out of this world" activity described here, students measure the Earth using meter sticks while measuring their shadows in two distant locations. To obtain the size of the Earth, students discover the connection between the measurements of the shadows and a model of the spherical Earth following the method developed by…

Objective: To investigate working memory (WM), academic achievement, and their relationship in university students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Method: Participants were university students with previously confirmed diagnoses of ADHD (n = 16) and normal control (NC) students (n = 30). Participants completed 3…