The aim of the present study was to investigate the associations between elementary school children's mathematical achievement and their conservation abilities, visuospatial skills, and numerosity processing speed. We also assessed differences in these abilities between children with different types of learning problems. In Study 1 (N = 229), we…

This study explored how an elementary reading teacher navigates the complex role of literacy instruction in public schools. Data was gathered through observation, semi-structured interviews, and document collection and analysis. Observation notes, transcripts, lesson plans, and schedules were analyzed using In Vivo, Values, and Descriptive coding.…

Eyewitnesses instructed to close their eyes during retrieval recall more correct and fewer incorrect visual and auditory details. This study tested whether eye closure causes these effects through a reduction in environmental distraction. Sixty participants watched a staged event before verbally answering questions about it in the presence of…

Studies of spatial representation generally focus on flat environments and visual input. However, the world is not flat, and slopes are part of most natural environments. In a series of 4 experiments, we examined whether humans can use a slope as a source of allocentric, directional information for reorientation. A target was hidden in a corner of…

It is well documented that in the first year after birth, infants are able to identify self-performed actions. This ability has been regarded as the basis of conscious self-perception. However, it is not yet known whether infants are also sensitive to aspects of the self when they cannot control the sensory feedback by means of self-performed…

Caparos and Linnell (2009, 2010) used a variable-separation flanker paradigm to show that (a) when cognitive load is low, increasing perceptual load causes spatial attention to focus and (b) when perceptual load is high, decreasing cognitive load causes spatial attention to focus. Here, we tested whether the effects of perceptual and cognitive…

Basic aspects of magnitude (such as luminance contrast) are directly represented by sensory representations in early visual areas. However, it is unclear how symbolic magnitudes (such as Arabic numerals) are represented in the brain. Here we show that symbolic magnitude affects binocular rivalry: perceptual dominance of numbers and objects of…

Accurately timing acoustic events in dynamic scenes is fundamental to scene analysis. To detect events in busy scenes, listeners must often identify a change in the "pattern" of ongoing fluctuation, resulting in many ubiquitous events being detected later than when they occurred. This raises the question of how delayed detection time affects the…

The purpose of this study was to compare the cognitive processing profiles of school-age children (ages 7 to 17) who met criteria for underachievement in oral reading accuracy based on three different methods: 1) use of a regression-based IQ-achievement discrepancy only (REGonly), 2) use of a low-achievement cutoff only (LAonly), and 3) use of a…

How does learning to categorize objects affect how people visually perceive them? Behavioral, neurophysiological, and neuroimaging studies have tested the degree to which category learning influences object representations, with conflicting results. Some studies have found that objects become more visually discriminable along dimensions relevant…

Background: Technical and device life issues are frequently the focus of post-laryngectomy rehabilitation studies examining indwelling voice prostheses. Patient perceptions and preferences are considered less often. Aims: To determine patient perceptions of two indwelling voice prostheses across parameters relating to device use and maintenance…

How do people learn multisensory, or amodal, representations, and what consequences do these representations have for perceptual performance? We address this question by performing a rational analysis of the problem of learning multisensory representations. This analysis makes use of a Bayesian nonparametric model that acquires latent multisensory…

This article discusses two "magic tricks" in terms of underlying optical principles. The first trick is new and produces a "ghost" in the air, and the second is the classical real image produced with two parabolic mirrors. (Contains 2 figure and 6 photos.)

When participants repeat the same task in a context in which the task may also switch (a mixed block), performance deteriorates compared to when there is only one task repeating (a pure block). Three experiments were designed to assess how perceptual and motor transitions influenced this mixing cost. Experiment 1 provided three pure block…

Two classes of hand action representations are shown to be activated by listening to the name of a manipulable object (e.g., cellphone). The functional action associated with the proper use of an object is evoked soon after the onset of its name, as indicated by primed execution of that action. Priming is sustained throughout the duration of the…