The concept of open functions was introduced to capture an intended feature of van Eyck's seminal play sculptures -- they do not suggest a specific action. In a recent study, Van der Schaaf, A. L., S. R. Caljouw, and R. Withagen. (2020. "Are Children Attracted to Play Elements with an Open Function?" "Ecological Psychology" 32:…

When searching for a known target, mental representations of target features, or templates, guide attention towards matching objects and facilitate recognition. When only distractor features are known, distractor templates allow irrelevant objects to be recognised and attention to be shifted away. This is particularly true in X-ray baggage search,…

Through a series of studies, we investigate how people direct gaze toward familiar and unfamiliar objects. When an observer tries to encode objects, gaze is first directed preferentially to the familiar object followed by a later prioritization of the unfamiliar ones. We demonstrate that the initial preference reflects prioritization of personally…

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the small but growing literature on the rehabilitation of language for older adults, as well as evaluate the clinical utility of a functional approach to language assessment. The study included an assessment-based response profile that informed individualized treatment targets and prompt selection,…

By building a schlieren optical system, the visualization of a 40 KHz sound wave is realized. By using the schlieren system, the demonstration of acoustic reflection, interference and diffraction can be easily realized. At the same time, the visual acoustic field provides another simple way for the measurement of sound velocity. In this paper, the…

The power and precision with which humans link language to cognition is unique to our species. By 3-4 months of age, infants have already established this link: simply listening to human language facilitates infants' success in fundamental cognitive processes. Initially, this link to cognition is also engaged by a broader set of acoustic stimuli,…

The published study of Nurrenbern and Pickering in 1987 raises awareness among chemistry educators that students' success in answering numerical questions does not necessarily reflect their degree of understanding of the related chemical concepts. Efforts have been made to provide more opportunities for students to improve their ability in…

Twenty-three college students participated in two studies evaluating an application designed to measure stimulus overselectivity in pictures depicting facial affect. We analyzed whether this application worked as designed by evaluating whether it could provide a robust analysis of the types of errors users make (e.g., by matching by the top…

In the present study, 151 third-grade Hong Kong children participated in two expression-picture matching experiments (a relation priming paradigm). In this paradigm, an unambiguous prime was first presented, followed by an ambiguous target that could be interpreted with either of two relations (i.e., Descriptor and Possessor). Children were asked…

This study investigated whether second language (L2) learners can develop predictive processing of determiners after a brief exposure to a novel language, and whether this depends on learners' awareness for the target structure and their cognitive aptitudes. One hundred L2 learners received auditory exposure to a miniature language based on Fijian…

Children's development and education take place in educational buildings with highly complex acoustic scenes, including spatially distributed target speakers, many surrounding distracting sounds, and general background noises. Auditory selective attention, therefore, is a valuable tool to orient oneself, to focus on specific sound sources, and to…

Infants born after fetal growth restriction (FGR)--an obstetric condition defined as the failure to achieve the genetic growth potential--are prone to neurodevelopmental delays, with language being one of the major affected areas. Yet, while verbal comprehension and expressive language impairments have been observed in FGR infants, children and…

Korean is a classifier language in which bare nouns are not obligatorily number-marked. Children learning other classifier languages like Japanese and Mandarin are late in learning the plural morpheme. In this paper, we present two datasets that suggest that Korean plural marker "-tul" is acquired much earlier, in contrast to what has…

Fear is an adaptive emotion that serves to protect an organism against potential dangers. It is often studied using classical conditioning paradigms where a conditioned stimulus is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus to induce a threat response. Less commonly studied is a phenomenon that is related to this form of conditioning, known as…

Prior research suggests that visual features of the classroom environment (e.g., charts and posters) are potential sources of distraction hindering children's ability to maintain attention to instructional activities and reducing learning gains in a laboratory classroom. However, prior research only examined short-term exposure to elements of…