The spatial relevance hypothesis (J. J. McDonald & L. M. Ward, 1999) proposes that covert auditory spatial orienting can only be beneficial to auditory processing when task stimuli are encoded spatially. We present a series of experiments that evaluate 2 key aspects of the hypothesis: (a) that "reflexive activation of location-sensitive neurons is…

We derive an analytic model of the inter-judge correlation as a function of five underlying parameters. Inter-cue correlation and the number of cues capture our assumptions about the environment, while differentiations between cues, the weights attached to the cues, and (un)reliability describe assumptions about the judges. We study the relative…

Switching from one functional or cognitive operation to another is thought to rely on executive/control processes. The efficacy of these processes may depend on the extent of overlap between neural circuitry mediating the different tasks; more effective task preparation (and by extension smaller switch costs) is achieved when this overlap is…

This paper argues that some of the patterns seen in aphasia may reflect difficulties in the cognitive preparations for language. In particular, some individuals might be unable to carry out processes of "Thinking for Speaking" (Slobin 1996), which frame thoughts for language production. Evidence to support this proposal is presented, together with…

The recovery from human persecution of some upper trophic level wildlife species coupled with ongoing expansion of human-dominated landscapes is leading to increased human-wildlife interactions in urban environments. Raptors in particular are drawn to high resource concentrations of potential nest sites and prey, and are colonizing cities across…

Problem Statement: Literacy skills are extremely important for all individuals, especially children with autism, because these skills provide a channel for educational assessment and learning as well as enhance vocational opportunities, promote self-expression, and facilitate independent living. Some individuals with autism cannot acquire academic…

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the new Cognitive Spare Capacity Test (CSCT), which measures aspects of working memory capacity for heard speech in the audiovisual and auditory-only modalities of presentation. Method: In Experiment 1, 20 young adults with normal hearing performed the CSCT and an independent battery of…

This review of current writing assessment practices focuses upon the adult population, an area significantly underrepresented within psychoeducational literature. As compared to other populations, such as K-12 students, there are few options for the practitioner wishing to evaluate adult writers by means of standardized assessment instruments.…

Grounded in sociocultural models of learning, this study explores structures for participation and types of interaction that occur during the performance of technology-assisted tasks in a science classroom to detail some of the opportunities for learning made available to English learners (ELs) and some practices that might constitute effective…

General education teachers currently have children in their classrooms who are on the autism spectrum. These teachers have had little to no training in either their teacher preparation nor-school based professional development programs in teaching children on the spectrum. The purpose of this paper is to explore teaching strategies that are…

This article reports on an 8-week study that investigated the differential effects of two written corrective feedback (CF) options on 92 low-intermediate EFL students' explicit and implicit knowledge of English articles and the extent to which language analytic ability might influence the effect of written CF. The study used a…

Social referencing was investigated in 18-month-old siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; "high-risk infants"). Infants were exposed to novel toys, which were emotionally tagged via adults' facial and vocal signals. Infants' information seeking (initiation of joint attention with an adult) and their approach/withdrawal behavior…

This study investigates the effects of topical knowledge on ESL (English as a Second Language) writing performance in the English Language Proficiency Index (LPI), a standardized English proficiency test used by many post-secondary institutions in western Canada. The participants were 50 students with different levels of English proficiency…

Although working memory has a highly constrained capacity limit of three or four items, both adults and toddlers can increase the total amount of stored information by "chunking" object representations in memory. To examine the developmental origins of chunking, we used a violation-of-expectation procedure to ask whether 7-month-old infants, whose…

L1-L2 translation of separate sentences is one kind of task format used by mainstream EFL teachers to assess their learners' grammatical accuracy. Aimed at improving teacher-written translation items, this study analyses linguistic features potentially causing such decontextualized cues (and their target responses) to sound odd or untypical of…