The game of Matching Pennies (MP), a simplified version of the more popular Rock, Papers, Scissors, schematically represents competitions between organisms with incentives to predict each other's behavior. Optimal performance in iterated MP competitions involves the production of random choice patterns and the detection of nonrandomness in the…

Increases in rates of punished behavior by the administration of drugs with anxiolytic effects (called antipunishment effects) are well established in animals but not humans. The present study examined antipunishment effects of ethanol in humans using a choice procedure. The behavior of 5 participants was placed under six concurrent…

We investigated the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in local contextual processing using a combined event-related potentials and lesion approach. Local context was defined as the occurrence of a short predictive series of visual stimuli occurring before delivery of a target event. Targets were preceded by either randomized sequences of standards…

In 5 experiments, we studied precautionary decisions in which participants decided whether or not to buy insurance with specified cost against an undesirable event with specified probability and cost. We compared the risks taken for precautionary decisions with those taken for equivalent monetary gambles. Fitting these data to Tversky and…

In the Simon effect, participants make a left or right keypress in response to a nonspatial attribute (e.g., color) that is presented on the left or right. Reaction times (RTs) increase when the response activated by the irrelevant stimulus location and the response retrieved by instruction are in conflict. The authors measured RTs and movement…

Binocular yoking of saccades is essential for single vision of words during reading. This study examines the quality of binocular coordination in individuals with dyslexia, independent of the process of reading. Fifteen dyslexia children (11.2 plus or minus 1.4 years) and 15 non-dyslexia individuals (8 children, aged 11.1 plus or minus 1.3 years,…

Associative learning is critical to normal cognitive development in children. However, young adults typically outperform children on paired-associate tasks involving visual, verbal and spatial location stimuli. The present experiment investigated cross-modal odour-place associative memory in children (7-10 years) and young adults (18-24 years).…

Previous studies have shown that bilingual adults use more gestures than English monolinguals. Because no study has compared the gestures of bilinguals and monolinguals in both languages, the high gesture rate could be due to transfer from a high gesture language or could result from the use of gesture to aid in linguistic access. In this study we…

Social referencing, a form of nonverbal communication, involves seeking out discriminative stimuli provided by others about contingencies in an ambiguous context in order to respond in a manner that produces reinforcement. Although demonstrated by typically developing infants, social referencing is notably absent or impaired in individuals with…

In Experiment 1, "more" and "less" relations were trained for arbitrary Stimuli A1 and A2 with 3 children with autism. The following conditional discriminations were then trained: A1-B1, A2-B2, B1-C1, B2-C2. In subsequent tests, participants showed derived more-less mands (mand with C1 for more and mand with C2 for less). A training procedure…

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…

Increased motivation towards social stimuli in Williams syndrome (WS) led us to hypothesize that a face's human status would have greater impact than face's orientation on WS' face processing abilities. Twenty-nine individuals with WS were asked to categorize facial emotion expressions in real, human cartoon and non-human cartoon faces presented…

Previous case-study research has explored the efficacy of motivational interviewing (MI) as a therapeutic approach for supporting young people in schools. This article considers how MI may additionally be used as an assessment and consultation tool for ascertaining the needs of disaffected young people and identifying appropriate support…

Effects of perceptual and cognitive loads on spoken-word recognition have so far largely escaped investigation. This study lays the foundations of a psycholinguistic approach to speech recognition in adverse conditions that draws upon the distinction between energetic masking, i.e., listening environments leading to signal degradation, and…

The perceptual loop theory of self-monitoring posits that auditory speech output is parsed by the comprehension system. For sign language, however, visual input from one's own signing is distinct from visual input received from another's signing. Two experiments investigated the role of visual feedback in the production of American Sign Language…