Infants enter the world prepared to learn about their environments and to become effective social partners, while most parents are equally prepared to support these early emergent skills. Through subtle, non-conscious behaviors, parents guide their infants in the regulation of emotions, language acquisition, and participation in social exchanges.…

One hundred and thirty-three preclinical medical students participated in 24 focus groups over the period 2007-2009 at Durham University. Focus groups were conducted to ascertain whether or not medical students found body painting anatomical structures to be an educationally beneficial learning activity. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory…

This study investigated the role that visual tracking plays in coupling rhythmic limb movements to an environmental rhythm. Two experiments were conducted in which participants swung a hand-held pendulum while tracking an oscillating stimulus or while keeping their eyes fixed on a stationary location directly above an oscillating stimulus. It…

Several types of contrast effects have been identified including incentive contrast, anticipatory contrast, and behavioral contrast. Clement, Feltus, Kaiser, and Zentall (2000) proposed a type of contrast that appears to be different from these others and called it within-trial contrast. In this form of contrast the relative value of a reinforcer…

Masked stimuli (primes) can affect the preparation of a motor response to subsequently presented target. In numerous studies, it has been shown that the compatibility effect is biphasic as it develops over time: positive (benefits for compatible trials and costs for incompatible trials) for short prime-target temporal distances and negative…

P. J. Kellman and T. F. Shipley (1992) and P. J. Kellman, P. Garrigan, and T. F. Shipley (2005) suggested that completion of partly occluded objects and illusory objects involve the same or similar mechanisms at critical stages of contour interpolation. B. L. Anderson, M. Singh, and R. W. Fleming and B. L. Anderson (2007) presented a number of…

DB, the first blindsight case to be tested extensively (Weiskrantz, 1986) has demonstrated the ability to detect and discriminate a range of visual stimuli presented within his perimetrically blind visual field defect. In a temporal two alternative forced choice (2AFC) detection experiment we have investigated the limits of DB's detection ability…

Our body-shadows are special stimuli in the visual world. They often have anatomical resemblance with our own body-parts and move as our body moves, with spatio-temporal correlation. Here, we show that self-attributed body-shadows cue attention to the body-part they refer to, rather than the location they occupy. Using speeded spatial…

The role of the primary motor cortex in the acquisition of new motor skills was evaluated during classical conditioning of vibrissal protraction responses in behaving mice, using a trace paradigm. Conditioned stimulus (CS) presentation elicited a characteristic field potential in the vibrissal motor cortex, which was dependent on the synchronized…

Fifty years after the publication of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior", some possibilities for the future of Skinner's "science of verbal behavior" are considered. Specifically, certain areas of development or advancement are examined which might be of special importance to the expansion and influence of the functional analysis of verbal behavior.…

This work examined predictions of the interpolation of familiar views (IFV) account of object recognition performance in 5-month-olds. Infants were familiarized to an object either from a single viewpoint or from multiple viewpoints varying in rotation around a single axis. Object recognition was then tested in both conditions with the same object…

We examined whether infants organize information according to the newly proposed principle of common region, which states that elements within a region are grouped together and separated from those of other regions. In Experiment 1, 6- to 7-month-olds exhibited sensitivity to regions by discriminating between the displacement of an element within…

Visual attention research has revealed that attentional allocation can occur in space- and/or object-based coordinates. Using the direct and elegant design of R. Egly, J. Driver, and R. Rafal (1994), the present experiments tested whether space- and object-based inhibition of return (IOR) emerge under similar time courses. The experiments were…

The contrast gain control model of adaptation predicts that the effects of contrast adaptation correlate with contrast sensitivity. This article reports that the effects of high contrast spatiotemporal adaptors are maximum when adapting around 19 Hz, which is a factor of two or more greater than the peak in contrast sensitivity. To explain the…

The present study investigated whether Pavlovian conditioning contributes, in the form of the response operandum serving as a conditioned stimulus, to the increase in the rate of response for 1% liquid-sucrose reinforcement when food-pellet reinforcement is upcoming. Rats were exposed to conditions in which sign tracking for 1% sucrose was…