The paradox of documenting history through gruesome visuals depicting the prominence of stories intrigues media researchers. Foundational work on the dual representation theory explains trauma transference to brain functions following disturbing emotional triggers. The analysis suggests an existing link between exposure to disturbing information…

In primary organic chemistry, students learn about the dehydration of ethanol to ethylene with concentrated sulfuric acid. Similar reactions(the dehydration of alcohols) exist in nature. For example, various alkenes with aromas are synthesized from linalool, a monoterpene tertiary alcohol. In this laboratory experiment, we report experiments…

People often misrecognize objects that are similar to those they have previously encountered. These mnemonic discrimination errors are attributed to shared memory representations (gist) typically characterized in terms of meaning. In two experiments, we investigated multiple semantic and perceptual relations that may contribute: at the concept…

Purpose: Speakers use auditory feedback to guide their speech output, although individuals differ in the magnitude of their compensatory response to perceived errors in feedback. Little is known about the factors that contribute to the compensatory response or how fixed or flexible they are within an individual. Here, we test whether manipulating…

Perception is driven not only by current stimulation but also by previous sensory experience, which may serve as a perceptual prior for stimulus processing. A possible mechanism underlying this phenomenon is formalized in the internal reference model, which assumes that humans rely on an internal reference that updates continuously by integrating…

Competing theories of dyslexia posit that reading difficulties arise from impaired visual, auditory, phonological, or statistical learning mechanisms. Importantly, many theories posit that dyslexia reflects a cascade of impairments emanating from a single "core deficit". Here we report two studies evaluating core deficit and…

Cognitive systems face a tension between stability and plasticity. The maintenance of long-term representations that reflect the global regularities of the environment is often at odds with pressure to flexibly adjust to short-term input regularities that may deviate from the norm. This tension is abundantly clear in speech communication when…

There are many situations in which a person must accurately estimate a stranger's age. For example, a salesperson must accurately estimate the age of a stranger who wishes to purchase age-restricted goods. Information from a stranger's eyes and hair can indicate their likely age. Here, two experiments examined whether adult participants' accuracy…

Educators manage student readiness for learning by applying models of instruction. The most common model used, however, is imprecise about cognitive operations. One way educators address this issue is with reflection, but reflection means many different things. An approach for narrowing reflection is to focus on metacognition. Literature has shown…

The present study aims to investigate the identification of native vowel categories by adult individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and estimate their reaction times in both normal and whisper registers; their responses were compared with those of typically developing individuals. The results demonstrated that there was no deficit for…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to better understand the "black box" of how coaching is enacted and how it unfolds in practice. Indeed, some of the mixed results concerning the efficacy of executive coaching appear anchored to the confusion and surrounding ambiguity of the episodic and processual nature of coaching. In this…

The retro-cue effect (RCE) describes the finding that participants' working memory performance is enhanced when their attention is directed to the to-be-tested position by a spatial cue during the retention interval. Here, we explore the relationship between RCE and working memory consolidation. A sequential display retro-cue paradigm is used for…

When learning an environment from virtual navigation people gain knowledge about landmarks, their locations, and the paths that connect them. The present study newly aimed to investigate all these domains of knowledge and how cognitive factors such as visuospatial abilities and wayfinding inclinations might support virtual passive navigation. A…

In many real-life contexts, observers are required to search for targets that are rarely present (e.g. tumours in X-rays; dangerous items in airport security screenings). Despite the rarity of these items, they are of enormous importance for the health and safety of the public, yet they are easily missed during visual search. This is referred to…

Previous studies have shown that the price of a given product impacts the perceived quality of such product. This finding was also observed in medical contexts, showing that expensive drugs increase the placebo effect compared to inexpensive ones. However, addressing a drug's efficacy requires making causal inferences between the drug and the…