It is generally assumed that slowing after errors is a cognitive control effect reflecting more careful response strategies after errors. However, clinical data are not compatible with this explanation. We therefore consider two alternative explanations, one referring to the possibility of a persisting underlying problem and one on the basis of…

The present research examines how a lineup administrator may influence eyewitness identification decisions through different forms of influence, after providing the witness with standard, unbiased instructions. Participant-witnesses viewed a staged crime and were later shown a target-present or target-absent lineup. The lineup administrators…

Two experiments examined child and adult processing of hierarchical stimuli composed of geometric forms. Adults (ages 18-23 years) and children (ages 7-10 years) performed a forced-choice task gauging similarity between visual stimuli consisting of large geometric objects (global level) composed of small geometric objects (local level). The…

Two experiments explored the ability of 18-month-old infants to form an abstract categorical representation of tight-fit spatial relations in a visual habituation task. In Experiment 1, infants formed an abstract spatial category when hearing a familiar word ("tight") during habituation but not when viewing the events in silence or when hearing a…

In probabilistic categorization, also known as multiple cue probability learning (MCPL), people learn to predict a discrete outcome on the basis of imperfectly valid cues. In MCPL, normatively irrelevant cues are usually ignored, which stands in apparent conflict with recent research in deterministic categorization that has shown that people…

We show that 4-year-olds assign the correct interpretation to antecedent-contained deletion (ACD) sentences because they have the correct representation of these structures. This representation involves Quantifier Raising (QR) of a Quantificational Noun Phrase (QNP) that must move out of the site of the verb phrase in which it is contained to…

The Millikan oil drop experiment has been characterized as one of the "most beautiful" physics experiments of all time and, certainly, as one of the most frustrating of all the exercises in the undergraduate physics laboratory. A literature review reveals that work done on addressing student difficulties in performing the oil drop experiment has,…

There are significant contradictions in undergraduate organic chemistry textbooks as to the mechanism of nucleophilic substitution reactions at saturated secondary carbons. Some texts say that only the S[subscript N]2 mechanism operates, others say that solvolysis reactions go entirely by the S[subscript N]1 mechanism, while most texts say that…

The steady-state fluorescence anisotropy is employed to study the binding of protein of a model protein, human serum albumin, to a commonly used flavonoid, quercetin. The experiment describes the thermodynamics, as well as the biochemical interactions of such binding effectively.

A simple method for the quantitative determination of photosynthetic pigments extracted from green beans using thin-layer chromatography is proposed. Various extraction methods are compared, and it is shown how a simple flatbed scanner and free software for image processing can give a quantitative determination of pigments. (Contains 5 figures.)

Laboratory experiment is conducted to give the students practical experience with the principles of electronic absorbance spectroscopy. This straightforward approach creates a powerful tool for exploring many of the aspects of quantitative absorbance spectroscopy.

The analysis describes an NMR experiment for the general chemistry laboratory, which employs an unknown imidazole solution to measure the pH values. The described mechanism can also be used for measuring the acidity within the isolated cells.

The dimensional change card-sorting task (DCCS) is used to assess the executive abilities of young children. Typically, 3-year-olds have difficulty in performing this task. However, the exact nature of this difficulty is still being debated. In the standard DCCS, children need to sort, for example, test cards with a blue flower or a red car into…

Manual responses can be defined by differing response parameters. Any of them may generate a Simon effect. For all those response parameters, the same implementation of the Simon effect (in terms of subserving mechanism) is assumed. In 3 experiments, subjects had to respond with either fingers or sticks. Temporal properties of the Simon effect…

The purpose of the two experiments was to investigate the potential effects of different types of visualizations and self-explanation prompts on learning human cardiovascular system in a multimedia environment. In Experiments 1 and 2, 70 and 44 college students were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions in a 2 × 2 factorial design with…