Prospective memory performance shows a decline in late adulthood. The present article examines the role of 3 main executive function facets (i.e., shifting, updating, and inhibition) as possible developmental mechanisms associated with these age effects. One hundred seventy-five young and 110 older adults performed a battery of cognitive tests…

The present study investigated the impact of bilingualism on efficiency of alerting, orienting and executive attention by means of the Lateralized Attention Network Test (LANT). Young adult bilinguals who had been exposed to their second language before the age of four years showed a reduced conflict cost and a larger alerting effect in terms of…

When studying verbal materials, both adults and children are often poor at accurately monitoring their level of learning and regulating their subsequent restudy of materials, which leads to suboptimal test performance. The present experiment investigated how monitoring accuracy and regulation of study could be improved when learning idiomatic…

Previous research indicates children reason in different ways about horizontal motion and motion in fall. At the same time, their understanding of motion down inclines appears to result from an interaction between horizontal and vertical motion understanding. However, this interaction is still poorly understood. Understanding of speed change may…

Faces convey many signals (i.e., gaze or expressions) essential for interpersonal interaction. We have previously shown that facial expressions of emotion and gaze direction are processed and integrated in specific combinations early in life. These findings open a number of developmental questions and specifically in this paper we address whether…

The article tests the assumption that forgetting in working memory for verbal materials is caused by time-based decay, using the complex-span paradigm. Participants encoded 6 letters for serial recall; each letter was preceded and followed by a processing period comprising 4 trials of difficult visual search. Processing duration, during which…

This study investigated whether learners of Japanese with different first language (L1) writing systems use different recognition strategies and whether second language (L2) exposure affects L2 kanji recognition. The study used a computerized lexical judgment task with 3 types of kanji characters to investigate these questions: (a)…

A dysfunction in predictive motor timing is put forward to underlie DCD-related motor problems. Predictive timing allows for the pre-selection of motor programmes (except "program" in computers) in order to decrease processing load and facilitate reactions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigated the neural…

English learners (ELs) represent one of the fastest growing student populations in the United States. Given that language can serve as a barrier in EL performance, test accommodations are provided to help level the playing field and allow ELs to better demonstrate their true performance level. Test accommodations on the computer offer the ability…

We analyzed the differential processing of nouns and verbs in a lexical decision task. Moderate and high-frequency nouns and verbs were compared. The characteristics of our material were specified at the formal level (number of letters and syllables, number of homographs, orthographic neighbors, frequency and age of acquisition), and at the…

Cognitive control enables flexible interaction with a dynamic environment. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated control adjustments in the stop-signal paradigm, a procedure that requires balancing speed (going) and caution (stopping) in a dual-task environment. Focusing on the slowing of go reaction times after stop signals, the authors…

The Embedded Figures Test assesses weak central coherence and individuals with autism are commonly assumed to perform superiorly; however, the evidence for this claim is somewhat mixed. Here, two large (N = 45 and 62) samples of high-functioning children (6-16 years) with autism spectrum disorder performed similarly to typically-developing…

It has long been understood that food deliveries may act as signals of future food location, and not only as strengtheners of prefood responding as the law of effect suggests. Recent research has taken this idea further--the main effect of food deliveries, or other "reinforcers", may be signaling rather than strengthening. The present experiment…

The Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH) posits that Specific Language Impairment (SLI) can be largely explained by abnormalities of brain structures that subserve procedural memory. The PDH predicts impairments of procedural memory itself, and that such impairments underlie the grammatical deficits observed in the disorder. Previous studies have…

The current research aimed to clarify the influence of age, intelligence and executive control function on the central tendency and intraindividual variability of saccadic reaction time in persons with intellectual disabilities. Participants were 44 persons with intellectual disabilities aged between 13 and 57 years whose IQs were between 14 and…