Can people learn causal structure more effectively through intervention rather than observation? Four studies used a trial-based learning paradigm in which participants obtained probabilistic data about a causal chain through either observation or intervention and then selected the causal model most likely to have generated the data. Experiment 1…

The ability to keep track of locations in a dynamic, multimodal environment is crucial for successful interactions with other people and objects. The authors investigated the existence and flexibility of spatial indexing in adults and 6-month-old infants by adapting an eye-tracking paradigm from D. C. Richardson and M. J. Spivey (2000). Multimodal…

According to D. E. Broadbent's (1958) selective filter theory, people do not process unattended stimuli beyond the analysis of basic physical properties. This theory was later rejected on the basis of numerous findings that people identify irrelevant (and supposedly unattended) stimuli. A careful review of this evidence, however, reveals strong…

In this study the authors address the issue of how the perceptual usefulness of nonliteral imagery should be evaluated. Perceptual performance with nonliteral imagery of natural scenes obtained at night from infrared and image-intensified sensors and from multisensor fusion methods was assessed to relate performance on 2 basic perceptual tasks to…

While motor dominance appears to drive limb selection for reaching movements at the midline and ipsilateral (dominant) side, this study examined the possible determinants associated with what drives the programming of movements in response to stimuli presented in contralateral space. Experiment 1 distinguished between object proximity and a…

Impaired motion perception can be induced in normal observers in a rapid serial visual presentation task. Essential for this effect is the presence of motion distractors prior to the motion target, and we proposed that this attention-induced motion blindness results from high-level inhibition produced by the distractors. To investigate this, we…

In a recent paper [Lidz, J., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. (2003). Understanding how input matters: Verb learning and the footprint of universal grammar. "Cognition," 87, 151-178], we provided cross-linguistic evidence in favor of the following linked assertions: (i) Verb argument structure is a correlate of verb meaning; (ii) However, argument…

For the past several years it has been thought that cues, such as eye direction, can trigger reflexive shifts in attention because of their biological relevance and their specialized neural architecture. However, very recently, Ristic, Friesen, and Kingstone (2002) reported that other stimuli, such as arrows, trigger reflexive shifts in attention…

Since the last major empirical review on choice interventions and preference assessments among people with severe to profound developmental disabilities (Lancioni, O'Reilly, & Emerson, 1996) the body of research in this area has grown extensively. This paper reviews thirty studies carried out between 1996 and 2002 that have been sorted into four…

The parietal cortex has been proposed as part of the neural network for guiding spatial attention. However, it is unclear to what degree the parietal cortex contributes to the attentional modulations of activities of the visual cortex and the engagement of the frontal cortex in the attention network. We recorded behavioural performance and…

Teleological explanations (TEs) account for the existence or properties of an entity in terms of a function: we have hearts because they pump blood, and telephones for communication. While many teleological explanations seem appropriate, others are clearly not warranted--for example, that rain exists for plants to grow. Five experiments explore…

Intuitively, dynamic visual stimuli, such as moving objects or flashing lights, attract attention. Visual search tasks have revealed that dynamic targets among static distractors can indeed efficiently guide attention. The present study shows that the reverse case, a static target among dynamic distractors, allows for relatively efficient…

Like faces, body postures are susceptible to an inversion effect in untrained viewers. The inversion effect may be indicative of configural processing, but what kind of configural processing is used for the recognition of body postures must be specified. The information available in the body stimulus was manipulated. The presence and magnitude of…

The authors report 3 dual-task experiments concerning the locus of frequency effects in word recognition. In all experiments, Task 1 entailed a simple perceptual choice and Task 2 involved lexical decision. In Experiment 1, an underadditive effect of word frequency arose for spoken words. Experiment 2 also showed underadditivity for visual lexical…

Recently developed accounts of language comprehension propose that sentences are understood by constructing a perceptual simulation of the events being described. These simulations involve the re-activation of patterns of brain activation that were formed during the comprehender's interaction with the world. In two experiments we explored the…