To examine the neural correlates and timing of human visual awareness, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in two experiments while the observers were detecting a grey dot that was presented near subjective threshold. ERPs were averaged for conscious detections of the stimulus (hits) and nondetections (misses) separately. Our results…

The study examined behavioral reactions to sound, including startle eye blinks, in young children with Williams syndrome (WS) using video-based observational techniques. Participants were 21 children with WS and 20 children with other developmental disabilities of mixed etiology between the ages of 2.5 and 6. Groups were matched for chronological…

Memory consolidation is the process by which newly learned information is stabilized into long-term memory (LTM). Considerable evidence indicates that retrieval of a consolidated memory returns it to a labile state that requires it to be restabilized. Consolidation of new fear memories has been shown to require de novo RNA and protein synthesis in…

Background: Deficiency in the adaptive allocation of attention to relevant environmental stimuli is an associated feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent evidence suggests that individuals with ASD may be specifically impaired in attentional prioritization of novel onsets. Method: We investigated modulation of attention by novel onset…

The purpose of this study was to analyze (a) the acquisition and maintenance effects of the simultaneous prompting (SP) procedure on teaching to name objects to two participants with mental retardation, (b) the effects of multiple exemplar approach for generalizing the acquired skills over three non-trained examples (sample), and (c) the effects…

This article examined the effect of Modern Standard Arabic orthography on speech production quality (syllable stress and vowels) by 23 Arabic-speaking children with severe or profound hearing loss aged 8-12 years. Children produced 15 one-syllable minimal pairs of words that differed in vowel length (short vs. long) and 20 two-syllable minimal…

Nineteen people with Asperger syndrome (AS)/High-Functioning Autism (HFA) (ages 7-15) were tested on imitation of two types of meaningless gesture: hand postures and finger positions. The individuals with AS/HFA achieved lower scores in the imitation of both hand and finger positions relative to a matched neurotypical group. The between-group…

Considerable research has been devoted to investigating learning without awareness. Burke and Roodenrys [Burke, D., & Roodenrys, S. (2000). Implicit learning in a simple cued reaction-time task. "Learning and Motivation" 31, 364-380] developed a simple learning task in which a cue shape predicts the arrival of a target shape (to which subjects…

The present study explored the manner in which hand position may affect visual processing. We studied three classic visual attention tasks (visual search, inhibition of return, and attentional blink) during which the participants held their hands either near the stimulus display, or far from the display. Remarkably, the hands altered visual…

Prior research on implicit memory appeared to support 3 generalizations: Conceptual tests are affected by divided attention, perceptual tasks are affected by certain divided-attention manipulations, and all types of priming are affected by selective attention. These generalizations are challenged in experiments using the implicit tests of category…

Older adults sometimes show a recall advantage for emotionally positive, rather than neutral or negative, stimuli (S. T. Charles, M. Mather, & L. L. Carstensen, 2003). In contrast, younger adults respond "old" and "remember" more often to negative materials in recognition tests. For younger adults, both effects are due to…

Emotionally relevant stimuli are prioritized in human information processing. It has repeatedly been shown that selective spatial attention is modulated by the emotional content of a stimulus. Until now, studies investigating this phenomenon have only examined "within-modality" effects, most frequently using pictures of emotional stimuli to…

Distinctiveness effects in children's (5-, 7-, and 11-year-olds) false memory illusions were examined using visual materials. In Experiment 1, developmental trends (increasing false memories with age) were obtained using Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists presented as words and color photographs but not line drawings. In Experiment 2, when items were…

Reaction time task rule congruency effects (RT-TRCEs) reflect faster responses to stimuli for which the competing task rules indicate the same correct response than to stimuli indicating conflicting responses. The authors tested the hypothesis that RT-TRCE reflects activated overlearned response category codes in long-term memory (such as up or…

This study analyzed the effect of various stimuli on the number and kinds of words produced, the number and length of grammatical structures formed, and the quality of writing produced under four stimulus conditions. Third-grade students from Clarke County, Georgia, wrote compositions after (1) being asked to write a story (minimal stimulus); (2)…