The authors investigated whether a Simon effect could be observed in an accessory-stimulus Simon task when participants were unaware of the task-irrelevant accessory cue. In Experiment 1A a central visual target was accompanied by a suprathreshold visual lateral cue. A regular Simon effect (i.e., faster cue-response corresponding reaction times…

It has been recently proposed that the time course of the Simon effect may vary across tasks, which might reflect different types of stimulus-response (S-R) transmissions (E. Wascher, U. Schatz, T. Kuder, & R. Verleger, 2001). The authors tested this notion in 4 experiments by comparing Simon effects evoked by horizontal and vertical S-R…

The present series of 4 experiments investigated the probability of responding in accord with equivalence in adult human participants as a function of increasing or decreasing delays in a many-to-one (MTO) or comparison-as-node and one-to-many (OTM) or sample-as-node conditional discrimination procedure. In Experiment 1, 12 participants started…

Recent data suggest recovery of language systems but persistent structural abnormalities in the prematurely born. We tested the hypothesis that subjects who were born prematurely develop alternative networks for processing language. Subjects who were born prematurely (n = 22; 600-1250 g birth weight), without neonatal brain injury on neonatal…

Background: Executive control deficits are common sequelae of childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI). The goal of the current study was to assess a specific executive control function, performance monitoring, in children following TBI. Methods: Thirty-one children with mild-moderate TBI, 18 with severe TBI, and 37 control children without TBI, of…

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated learning of the value of money from product prices in an unfamiliar currency when the prices are proportional to quantity. In support of the second stage of a hypothesized 2-stage process of learning, Experiment 1, in which 32 undergraduates participated, shows that response times for inferences of…

This study investigated the recognition of Swedish inflected nouns in two participant groups. Both groups were Finnish-speaking late learners of Swedish, but the groups differed in regard to their Swedish language proficiency. In a visual lexical decision task, inflected Swedish nouns from three frequency ranges were contrasted with corresponding…

This study tested the hypothesis that violent video games are especially likely to increase aggression when players identify with violent game characters. Dutch adolescent boys with low education ability (N=112) were randomly assigned to play a realistic or fantasy violent or nonviolent video game. Next, they competed with an ostensible partner on…

Patients with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) have calculation impairments. This study examined whether impaired number knowledge depends on verbal mediation. We focused particularly on knowledge of very small numbers, where there is a precise relationship between a cardinality and its number concept, but little hypothesized role for verbal…

This article describes a general item response theory model for personality items that allows the information provided by the item response times to be used to estimate the individual trait levels. The submodel describing the item response times is a modification of Thissen's log-linear model and is based on the distance-difficulty hypothesis in…

Background: The study of cerebral specialization in persons with Down syndrome (DS) has revealed an anomalous pattern of organization. Specifically, persons with DS elicit a right cerebral hemisphere lateralization for receptive language and a left cerebral hemisphere lateralization for the production of simple and complex movements: a pattern…

This study evaluated the effects of using differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) with a differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) resetting time schedule to reduce stereotypy in a child with Rett Syndrome. The primary purpose of the investigation was to compare latency and choice as dependent measures to identify…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine children's knowledge of semantic relations. Method: In Experiment 1, the 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults participated in an object decision task. Participants in the primed group made object decisions in response to primes that were related taxonomically, thematically, or perceptually to the…

A long-standing issue in the study of how people acquire visual information centers around the scheduling and deployment of attentional resources: Is the process serial, or is it parallel? A substantial empirical effort has been dedicated to resolving this issue. However, the results remain largely inconclusive because the methodologies that have…

This study used a choice reaction-time paradigm to test the perceived impairment of facial affect recognition in Asperger's disorder. Twenty teenagers with Asperger's disorder and 20 controls were compared with respect to the latency and accuracy of response to happy or disgusted facial expressions, presented in cartoon or real images and in…