Whereas some research on immediate recall of verbal lists has suggested that it is limited by the number of chunks that can be recalled (e.g., N. Cowan, Z. Chen, & J. N. Rouder, 2004; E. Tulving & J. E. Patkau, 1962), other research has suggested that it is limited by the length of the material to be recalled (e.g., A. D. Baddeley, N. Thomson, &…

Two experiments explore the activation of semantic information during spoken word recognition. Experiment 1 shows that as the name of an object unfolds (e.g., lock), eye movements are drawn to pictorial representations of both the named object and semantically related objects (e.g., key). Experiment 2 shows that objects semantically related to an…

Braking to avoid a collision can be controlled by keeping the deceleration required to stop (i.e., ideal deceleration) in the "safe" region below maximum deceleration, but maximum deceleration is not optically specified and can vary as conditions change. When brake strength was manipulated between participants using a simulated braking task, the…

The combined tools of psycholinguistics and systems analysis have produced advances in motivational profiling resulting in numerous applications to behavioral engineering. Knowing the way people frame their motive offers leverage in causing behavior change ranging from persuasive marketing campaigns, forensic profiling, individual psychotherapy,…

Recent studies have reported that preverbal infants are able to discriminate between numerosities of sets presented within a particular modality. There is still debate, however, over whether they are able to perform intermodal numerosity matching, i.e. to relate numerosities of sets presented with different sensory modalities. The present study…

Toddlers' (MA = 22 and 27 months) ability to extend newly taught verbs to new situational and sentential contexts was investigated. Children were interactively taught two novel verbs, presented in only the transitive frame (e.g. "You're lorping the ball"), in a playroom setting. They then viewed the verb actions presented on side-by-side monitors…

Inmate treatment programs are designed to rehabilitate individuals who are incarcerated and give them the chance for a crime-free life. Previous research shows support for inmate treatment programs and support for moral education programs that have been implemented mostly in school settings. This particular study investigated a moral education…

We tried to enrich teaching human anatomy in high school biology lessons. Students construct dichotomous identification keys to the cells, tissues, organs, or body parts. By doing this, students have achieved higher-order cognitive levels of knowledge because construction of such keys is based on analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Students found…

In recent years, the effect of sleep on memory consolidation has received considerable attention. In humans, these studies concentrated mainly on procedural types of memory, which are considered to be hippocampus-independent. Here, we show that sleep also has a persisting effect on hippocampus-dependent declarative memory. In two experiments, we…

Damage to the medial region of the thalamus, both in clinical cases (e.g., patients with infarcts or the Korsakoff's syndrome) and animal lesion models, is associated with variable amnesic deficits. Some studies suggest that many of these memory deficits rely on the presence of lateral thalamic lesions (LT) that include the intralaminar nuclei,…

Cocaine produces multiple neuroadaptations with chronic repeated use. Many of these neuroadaptations can be reversed or normalized by extinction training during withdrawal from chronic cocaine self-administration in rats. This article reviews our past and present studies on extinction-induced modulation of the neuroadaptive response to chronic…

Information storage in the brain is a temporally graded process involving different memory phases as well as different structures in the mammalian brain. Cortical plasticity seems to be essential to store stable long-term memories, although little information is available at the moment regarding molecular and cellular events supporting memory…

It is now well-established that there is a causal connection between children's phonological skills and their acquisition of reading and spelling. Here we study low-level auditory processes that may underpin the development of phonological representations in children. Dyslexic and control children were given a battery of phonological tasks,…

The abilities of 19 adult students with dyslexia and 19 students without dyslexia to recall number facts were compared. Despite being matched for estimated IQ, the dyslexic students were less accurate than the non-dyslexic students when answering subtraction and multiplication questions. When the dyslexic students answered addition and subtraction…

We investigated the role of executive and spatial representational processes in impaired performance of block construction tasks by children with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetic defect that results in severely impaired spatial cognition. In Experiment 1, we examined performance in two kinds of block construction tasks, Simple Puzzles, in…