In 3 experiments, the authors examined the role of memory for prior instances for making relative judgments in conflict detection. Participants saw pairs of aircraft either repeatedly conflict with each other or pass safely before being tested on new aircraft pairs, which varied in similarity to the training pairs. Performance was influenced by…

The study follows up on the contention that self-controlled feedback schedules benefit learning, because they are more tailored to the performers' needs than externally controlled feedback schedules (Chiviacowsky & Wulf, 2002). Under this assumption, one would expect learning advantages for individuals who decide whether they want to receive…

This study investigated the development of the many-to-one counting strategy in 4- year-old children. In the first experiment, 52 children participated. Their development with respect to two kinds of tasks, a hidden-items task and a needed-items task, was studied over four sessions. Children (n = 28) who accurately used the many-to-one strategy in…

Berger and his colleagues argue that collective validation (i.e., group members' corroboration of deferential behavior) is an important source of legitimacy in informal task groups. This invites the question "What causes collective validation?" Drawing from Simmel and Blau in particular, I develop an explanation of collective validation that…

The semantic category effect represents a category dissociation between biological and nonbiological objects in picture naming. The aim of this preliminary study was to further examine this phenomenon, and to explore the possible association between the effect and subjective emotional valence for the named objects. Using a speeded picture naming…

Ten Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients and 10 control participants were tested using a task-switching paradigm in which there was a random task sequence, and the task was cued in every trial. Five PD patients showed a unique error profile. Their performance approximated guessing when accuracy was dependent on correct task identification, and was…

Processing abilities in aphasia, and the nature of processing breakdowns, were the focuses of this investigation. Individuals with either fluent or nonfluent aphasia, plus a control group, participated in a cross-modal lexical priming task designed to elicit priming effects when activation of inference interpretations occurred. Comprehension of…

A well-known asymmetry exists in the bilingual masked priming literature in which lexical decision is used: namely, masked primes in the dominant language (L1) facilitate decision times on targets in the less dominant language (L2), but not vice versa. In semantic categorization, on the other hand, priming is symmetrical. In Experiments 1-3 we…

This study investigated the relationship between theory of mind and executive functioning in children with autistic spectrum disorders through a training study. Ten children were trained on theory of mind, whilst ten were trained in executive function. Seven children were assigned to a control group, receiving no intervention. Training programmes…

Poorer performance in conditions involving task repetition within blocks of mixed tasks relative to task repetition within blocks of single task is called mixing cost (MC). In 2 experiments exploring 2 hypotheses regarding the origins of MC, participants either switched between cued shape and color tasks, or they performed them as single tasks.…

In humans, impaired recognition memory following lesions thought to be limited to the hippocampal region has been demonstrated for a wide variety of tasks. However, the importance of the human hippocampus for olfactory recognition memory has scarcely been explored. We evaluated the ability of memory-impaired patients with damage thought to be…

There is now accumulating evidence that the striatal complex in its two major components, the dorsal striatum and the nucleus accumbens, contributes to spatial memory. However, the possibility that different striatal subregions might modulate specific aspects of spatial navigation has not been completely elucidated. Therefore, in this study, two…

In a first study, we considered whether modelling and the type of an adult's request influenced children's ability at 1;8 and 2;2 to comprehend gestures and replica objects as symbols for familiar objects. In a second study, we evaluated whether modelling and type of request influenced children's ability at 1;8 (N=24) to understand unfamiliar…

When drawing real scenes or copying simple geometric figures young children are highly sensitive to parallel cues and use them effectively. However, this sensitivity can break down in surprisingly simple tasks such as copying a single line where robust directional errors occur despite the presence of parallel cues. Before we can conclude that this…

Two theories that attempt to explain the relationship between false belief understanding and inhibition skills were investigated: (1) theory of mind development improves self-control, and (2) executive control is necessary for developing a theory of mind. A microgenetic approach was adopted, with a group of 21 children completing a battery of…