Harsh environments are known to predict deficits in children's cognitive abilities. Life history theory approaches challenge this interpretation, proposing stressed children's cognition becomes specialized to solve problems in fitness-enhancing ways. The goal of this study was to examine associations between early environmental harshness and…

This study aims to test how an intervention based on virtual reality (VR) may enhance visuospatial skills amongst people with disability. A quasi-experimental intra-group study was therefore conducted. Participants were 20 people with severe disability (65% males; 34.35 years, on average, and 84.95% of disability rate according to the Andalusian…

Since augmented reality (AR) has been increasingly applied in education recently, the investigation of students' learning experiences with AR could be helpful for educators to implement AR learning. With a quantitative survey using three questionnaires, this study explored the relationships among 153 students' perceived cognitive load, motivation,…

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health disorders, and daily transient feelings of anxiety (or "stress") are ubiquitous. However, the precise impact of both transient and pathological anxiety on higher-order cognitive functions, including short- and long-term memory, is poorly understood. A clearer understanding of the…

English orthographic learning, among Chinese-L1 children who were beginning to learn English as a foreign language, was documented when: (1) "only" visual memory was at their disposal, (2) visual memory and either "some" letter-sound knowledge or "some" semantic information was available, and (3) visual memory,…

The inclusion of pupils with visual impairment, within Italian mainstream schools, is an area of interest for the field of special education that is involved in identifying the most effective teaching strategies to promote the teaching-learning process. The perceptive difficulties that the pupils with visual impairment encounter in the first step…

In recent years, linguists have increasingly turned to the cognitive sciences to broaden their investigation into the roots and development of language. With the advent of cognitive-linguistic, usage-based and complex-adaptive models of language, linguists today are utilizing approaches and insights from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology,…

Public schools have been under great scrutiny. National and international tests have exposed deficiencies of students' knowledge prompting federal and state legislation to focus on improving schools' effectiveness. The pressure induced by recent legislation have school districts scrambling to increase student achievement. One area of reform…

The relations between reading, auditory, speech, phonological and tactile spatial processing are investigated in a Dutch speaking sample of blind braille readers as compared to sighted print readers. Performance is assessed in blind and sighted children and adults. Regarding phonological ability, braille readers perform equally well compared to…

Background: The attentional blink (AB) phenomenon was used to assess the effect of emotional information on early visual attention in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The AB effect is the momentary perceptual unawareness that follows target identification in a rapid serial visual processing…

Audio-visual integration was studied in children aged 8-17 (N = 30) and adults (N = 22) using the "flash-beep illusion" paradigm, where the presentation of two beeps causes a single flash to be perceived as two flashes ("fission" illusion), and a single beep causes two flashes to be perceived as one flash ("fusion" illusion). Children reported…

A procedure to effectively and efficiently train moderately and severely retarded individuals to make fine visual discriminations is described. Results suggest that expectancies for such individuals are in need of examination. Implications for sheltered workshops, work activity centers and classrooms are discussed. [This article appeared…

The present study explored the temporal allocation of attention in groups of 8-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and adults performing a rapid serial visual presentation task. In a dual-condition task, participants had to detect a briefly presented target (T2) after identifying an initial target (T1) embedded in a random series of…

Structures in the medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex, are known to be essential for the formation of long-term memory. Recent animal and human studies have investigated whether perirhinal cortex might also be important for visual perception. In our study, using a simultaneous oddity discrimination task, rats with…

Purpose: The aims of this study were to assess young (5- to 10-year-old) Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant (CI) users' musical pitch perception and to assess the benefits of computer-based home training on performance. Method: Melodic contour identification (MCI) was used to assess musical pitch perception in 14 Mandarin-speaking pediatric CI…