Challenging one's brain is the beginning of making great art. Tangrams are a great way to keep students thinking about their latest art project long after leaving the classroom. A tangram is a Chinese puzzle. The earliest known reference to tangrams appears in a Chinese book dated 1813, but the puzzles existed long before that date. The puzzle…

Within the parietal cortex, the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) seem to be involved in both spatial and nonspatial functions: Both areas are activated when misleading information is provided by invalid spatial cues in Posner's location-cueing paradigm, but also when infrequent deviant stimuli are presented within…

This study experimentally tested the relationship between children's lexicon size and their ability to learn new words within the domain of color. We manipulated the size of 25 20-month-olds' color lexicons by training them with two, four, or six different color words over the course of eight training sessions. We subsequently tested children's…

This article describes a classroom art project inspired by the work of Robert Frost, one of the most acclaimed and beloved American poets of all time. Using tints and shades in a composition, this project demonstrates how quality literature may be incorporated into elementary art lessons in a very useful way, making art an important complement to…

It is no wonder that works of art by Henri Matisse appeal to children, as his work has been said to "invite participation." His use of shape, color, design, and composition make his creations stand apart from others. By sharing examples of his line drawings, paintings, sculptures, and paper cutouts, children gain the sense that making art can be a…

Marbling paper is a favorite in many elementary classrooms. The marbling project described in this article, using a sunset and silhouette concept, is foolproof, inexpensive, and engaging. After looking at images of incredible sunsets for inspiration, each student uses marbling paper, black construction paper, three colors of chalk, and a tub of…

In two experiments children with autism and two groups of controls matched for either chronological or non-verbal mental age were tested on tasks of colour discrimination and memory. The results from experiment 1 showed significantly poorer colour discrimination in children with autism in comparison to typically developing chronological age…

In previous studies, children disoriented in small enclosures used room shape, but not wall colors, to find hidden objects. Their reorientation was said to depend solely on a "geometric module" informationally encapsulated with respect to color. We argue that previous studies did not fully evaluate children's use of color owing to a bias in the…

Teacher referrals for consultation resulted in two independent teams collecting evidence that allowed for a treatment component evaluation of color wheel (CW) procedures and/or interdependent group-oriented reward (IGOR) procedures on inappropriate vocalizations in one third- and one first-grade classroom. Both studies involved the application of…

Bipolar (BD) symptomatology is prevalent in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and may lead to increased impairment. The current study compared clinical and neurocognitive impairment in children (7-13 years) diagnosed with ASD (n=55), BD (n=34), ASD + BD (n=23), and a non-clinical control group (n=27). Relative to the ASD group, the ASD…

Objective: Negative priming (NP) is the slowed response to a stimulus that was previously ignored. Response times in NP task conditions were compared with the interference provided by congruent/incongruent stimuli in a Stroop condition in the same task in children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), their unaffected…

Cognitive control theory suggests conflict effects are reduced following high- relative to low-conflict trials. Such reactive adjustments in control, frequently termed "conflict adaptation effects," indicate a dynamic interplay between regulative and evaluative components of cognitive control necessary for adaptable goal-directed behavior. The…

When tracking moving objects in space humans usually attend to the objects' spatial locations and update this information over time. To what extent do surface features assist attentive tracking? In this study we asked participants to track identical or uniquely colored objects. Tracking was enhanced when objects were unique in color. The benefit…

Findings are mixed concerning inhibition in autism. Using the classic Stroop, children with autism (CWA) often outperform typically developing children (TDC). A classic Stroop and a chimeric animal Stroop were used to explore the validity of the Stroop task as a test of inhibition for CWA. During the classic Stroop, children ignored the word and…

Some types of automaticity can be attributed to simple stimulus-response associations (G. D. Logan, 1988). This can be studied with paradigms in which associations to an irrelevant stimulus automatically influence responding to a relevant stimulus. In 1 example, the irrelevant and relevant stimuli were presented successively with the 1st,…