Stimuli uncorrelated with reinforcement have been shown to enhance response rates and resistance to disruption; however, the effects of different rates of stimulus presentations have not been assessed. In two experiments, we assessed the effects of adding different rates of response-dependent brief stimuli uncorrelated with primary reinforcement…

Fire interest is a risk factor for firesetting. This study tested whether a fire-specific emotional Stroop task can effectively measure an information-processing bias for fire-related stimuli. Clinic-referred and nonreferred adolescents (aged 13-16 years) completed a pictorial "Fire Stroop," as well as a self-report fire interest questionnaire and…

This article presents an art project inspired by a drawing of a chameleon the author saw in an art-supply catalog. Chameleons prove to be a good subject to highlight shape, color and texture with eigth-graders. In this project, middle- and high-school students draw a chameleon, learn how to use shapes to add to their chameleon drawing, learn how…

The question why synaesthesia, an atypical binding within or between modalities, occurs is both enduring and important. Two explanations have been provided: (1) a congenital explanation: we are all born as synaesthetes but most of us subsequently lose the experience due to brain development; (2) a learning explanation: synaesthesia is related to…

The author and her class used chalk pastels before, in the typical manner with much blending and mixing of color. She felt her high-school class needed to try another technique with no smudging with tissues, no using tortillons (blending stumps), no soft color merging. All too often, young artists blend too many colors together and lose the…

Increased processing time for threatening stimuli is a reliable finding in emotional Stroop tasks. This is particularly pronounced among individuals with anxiety disorders and reflects heightened attentional bias for perceived threat. In this repeated measures study, 35 healthy participants completed a randomized series of Stroop tasks involving…

Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays roles in episodic memory judgments, the specific processes it supports are not understood fully. Event-related potential (ERP) studies of episodic retrieval have revealed an electrophysiological modulation--the right-frontal ERP old/new effect--which is thought to reflect activity in PFC. The functional…

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and n-back tasks we investigated whether, in 11-13-year-old children, spatial (location) and nonspatial (color) information is differentially processed during visual attention (0-back) and working memory (WM) (2-back) tasks and whether such cognitive task performance, compared to a resting state,…

We comment on Goldstein, Davidoff, and Roberson's replication and extension ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102", 219-238 [2009]) of our study of the effect of toddlers' color term knowledge on their categorical perception (CP) of color ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 90", 114-141 [2005]). First, we discuss how best to…

The article presents a usage-based analysis of color attribution, i.e. the construal of the relation between color property and an entity to which it is attributed in painting descriptions. The study is based on the corpus of 100 catalog entries written for American art museums. It focuses on the two most frequent morpho-syntactic patterns in the…

Several theories suggest that actions are coded for imitation in terms of mentalistic goals, or inferences about the actor's intentions, and that these goals solve the "correspondence problem" by allowing sensory input to be translated into matching motor output. We tested this intention reading hypothesis against general process accounts of…

Reading is a learned skill needed for life. It requires cognitive processing increasing with practice. This study examined the use of colored paper for comprehension and vocabulary assessments given to fifty-one fourth graders for the purpose of increasing test scores. All fourth grade students received weekly comprehension and vocabulary…

For over a century, a link between left prefrontal cortex and language processing has been accepted, yet the precise characterization of this link remains elusive. Recent advances in both the study of sentence processing and the neuroscientific study of frontal lobe function suggest an intriguing possibility: The demands to resolve competition…

This parent-research article juxtaposes two theoretical frameworks in support of an analysis of a young child's uses of color in her sign-making; that is, in her efforts at writing and drawing. Perspectives from both social semiotics and the idea of literacy learning as social practice frame the examination and interpretation of the early…

Performance on the task-switching paradigm is greatly affected by the amount of conflict between tasks. Compared to adults, children appear to be particularly influenced by this conflict, and this suggests that the ability to resolve interference between tasks improves with age. The authors used the task-switching paradigm to investigate how this…