A briefly presented target can be rendered invisible by a lingering sparse mask that does not even touch it. This form of visual backward masking, called object substitution masking, is thought to occur at the object level of processing. However, it remains unclear whether object-level interference alone produces substitution masking because…

We hypothesized that novel stimuli represent salient learning signals that can motivate "exploration" in search for potential rewards. In computational theories of reinforcement learning, this is referred to as the novelty "exploration bonus" for rewards. If true, stimulus novelty should enhance the reward anticipation signals in brain areas that…

Speakers monitor their speech output by listening to their own voice. However, signers do not look directly at their hands and cannot see their own face. We investigated the importance of a visual perceptual loop for sign language monitoring by examining whether changes in visual input alter sign production. Deaf signers produced American Sign…

The purpose of this experiment is to test whether shift flexibility in kindergarten children is a joint function of rule-usage and inhibition of attention. Sixty-six children were given either a distraction or facilitation condition in a computerized version of the dimensional change card sort task. In the distraction condition, the background of…

We explored how speakers and listeners use hand gestures as a source of perceptual-motor information during naturalistic communication. After solving the Tower of Hanoi task either with real objects or on a computer, speakers explained the task to listeners. Speakers' hand gestures, but not their speech, reflected properties of the particular…

Mammillary body atrophy is present in a number of neurological conditions and recent clinical findings highlight the importance of these nuclei for memory. While most accounts of diencephalic amnesia emphasize the functional importance of the hippocampal projections to the mammillary bodies, the present study tested the importance of the other…

How do primary students construct understandings of the opposite sex? In what ways do these constructions manifest in the visual texts created in literacy and language arts classrooms? Using visual discourse analysis (Albers, 2007) and scheme analysis (Sonesson, 1988) as interpretive methods, we analyzed the visual texts created by 23 third grade…

Emotion recognition was investigated in typically developing individuals and individuals with autism. Experiment 1 tested children (5-7 years, n = 37) with brief video displays of facial expressions that varied in subtlety. Children with autism performed worse than the control children. In Experiment 2, 3 age groups (8-12 years, n = 49; 13-17…

Speech priming tasks are frequently used to delineate stages in the speech process such as lexical retrieval and motor programming. These tasks, often measured in reaction time (RT), require fast and accurate responses, reflecting maximized participant performance, to result in robust priming effects. Encouraging speed and accuracy in responding…

In simple tests of preference, infants as young as newborns prefer faces and face-like stimuli over distractors. Little is known, however, about the development of attention to faces in complex scenes. We recorded eye-movements of 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old infants and adults during free-viewing of clips from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (an animated…

Viewers can easily spot a target picture in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), but can they do so if more than 1 picture is presented simultaneously? Up to 4 pictures were presented on each RSVP frame, for 240 to 720 ms/frame. In a detection task, the target was verbally specified before each trial (e.g., "man with violin"); in a…

Since M. M. Chun and Y. Jiang's (1998) original study, a large body of research based on the contextual cuing paradigm has shown that the visuocognitive system is capable of capturing certain regularities in the environment in an implicit way. The present study investigated whether regularities based on the semantic category membership of the…

Three experiments are reported that investigate the extent to which an authority figure influences the level of persuasion undergraduate students and research-active mathematicians invest in mathematical arguments. We demonstrate that, in some situations, both students and researchers rate arguments as being more persuasive when they are…

Associations between corresponding stimulus-response locations are often characterized as over learned, producing automatic activation. However, 84 practice trials with an incompatible mapping eliminate the benefit for spatial correspondence in a transfer Simon task, where stimulus location is irrelevant. The authors examined whether transfer…

According to Piaget, 5- or 6-year-old children gradually acquire the concept of time based on events (Piaget, 1969). In his experiment of investigating children's time concepts, Piaget found that children of these ages were able to place pictures based on sequential events with some errors; the younger children made more errors. The National…