Although it has been established that human beings process concrete and abstract words differently, it is still a matter of debate what factors contribute to this difference. Since concrete concepts are closely tied to sensory perception, perceptual experience seems to play an important role in their processing. The present study investigated the…

In this study, we examined the effects of emotional experience, a relatively new dimension of emotional knowledge that gauges the ease with which words evoke emotional experience, on abstract word processing in the Stroop task. In order to test the context-dependency of these effects, we accentuated the saliency of this dimension in Experiment 1A…

Plants are characterised by a great diversity of easily observed features such as colours or shape, but children show low interest in learning about them. Here, we integrated modern theory of adaptive memory and evolutionary views of the function of fruit colouration on children's retention of information. Survival-relevant (fruit toxicity) and…

The manipulation of colour, form and texture within a commercial design activity is a core competency for an industrial designer. The job of the Industrial designer is to use colour, form, texture, temperature and movement to deliver a sensory experience that evokes a desired response. The core deliverables of an industrial designer are embedded…

The systematic use of reinforcers is an essential component of behavioral intervention for individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Today, the use of rigorous formal preference assessments, including paired-preference assessments, are widely conducted to help determine which items to use as reinforcers during intervention. Although…

Instructors often present Mendelian genetics and molecular biology separately. As a result, students often fail to connect the two topics in a tangible manner. We have adopted a simple experiment to help link these two important topics in a basic biology course, using red and white onions bought from a local grocery store. A lack of red coloration…

Background: The most common problems in individuals with autistic spectrum disorders are eye contact, being able to follow objects for a long time and lack of attention. Sports activities are known to prevent the negative symptoms of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The Badminton sports branch has a positive effect on the individual's object control,…

The current study examined color constancy in infants using a familiarization paradigm. We first obtained isoluminance in each infant as defined by the minimum motion paradigm and used these data to control the luminance of stimuli in the main experiments. In the familiarization phase of the main experiment, two identical smiling face patterns…

Most current accounts of color word acquisition propose that the delay between children's first production of color words and adult-like understanding is due to problems abstracting color as a domain of meaning. Here we present evidence against this hypothesis, and show that, from the time children produce color words in a labeling task they use…

Recent evidence suggests that 3-year-olds can take other people's visual perspectives not only when they perceive different things (Level 1) but even when they see the same thing differently (Level 2). One hypothesis is that 3-year-olds are good perspective takers but cannot confront different perspectives on the same object (Perner, Stummer,…

Francis (2013) tested for and found evidence of publication bias in 1 of the 3 focal relations examined in Elliot et al. (2010), that between red and attractiveness. He then called into question the research as a whole and the field of experimental psychology more generally. Our reply has 3 foci. First, we attend to the bottom line regarding the…

People with grapheme-colour synaesthesia have been shown to have enhanced memory on a range of tasks using both stimuli that induce synaesthesia (e.g. words) and, more surprisingly, stimuli that do not (e.g. certain abstract visual stimuli). This study examines the latter by using multi-featured stimuli consisting of shape, colour and location…

The goal of the present study is to determine how to incorporate social cues such as gesturing in animated pedagogical agents (PAs) for online multimedia lessons in ways that promote student learning. In 3 experiments, college students learned about synaptic transmission from a multimedia narrated presentation while their eye movements were…

The visual is a dominant mode of information retrieval and understanding however, the focus on the visual dimension of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) is still quite weak in relation to its predominant focus on usability. To accommodate the future needs of the visual learner, designers of e-learning environments should advance the current…

We are so used to accept new technologies being the driver of change and innovation in human computer interfaces (HCI). In our research we focus on the development of innovations as a design process--or design, for short. We also refer to the entire process of creating innovations and putting them to use as "cognitive processes"--or…