Insulin has been shown to impact on learning and memory in both humans and animals, but the downstream signaling mechanisms involved are poorly characterized. Insulin receptor substrate-2 (Irs2) is an adaptor protein that couples activation of insulin- and insulin-like growth factor-1 receptors to downstream signaling pathways. Here, we have…

The role of working memory (WM) and inhibition in mental set shifting was examined from an individual difference perspective in children aged 5-14?years (N?=?117). Using the Hearts and Flowers task the rationale of the present study was to directly test the theoretical assumption that mental set shifiting in childhood primarily builds on WM and…

Four experiments used rats to study appetitive-aversive transfer. Rats trained to eat a palatable food in a distinctive context and shocked in that context ate and did not freeze when tested 1 d later but froze and did not eat when tested 14 d later. These results were associatively mediated (Experiments 1 and 2), observed when rats were or were…

The primary purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the relationship of handwriting speed, fine motor fluency, speed of verbal access, language comprehension, working memory, and attention (executive control; selective) to note-taking and all of the aforementioned variables to test performance (written recall). A second purpose was to…

The spatial memory for the last position occupied by a moving target is usually displaced forward in the direction of motion. Interpreted as a mental analogue of physical momentum, this phenomenon was coined "representational momentum" (RM). As momentum is given by the product of an object's velocity and mass, both these factors came to…

This installation is one of a series made and being made while the author writes a life-long poem chronicle, "thecanadaproject." The photographs were taken as the author sifted through her personal archive--a collection that is at once intimate and filled with fragments from a public repository: that of the bombing of an airplane in…

This study explored whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties with action monitoring. Two experimental tasks examined whether adults with ASD are able to monitor their own actions online, and whether they also show a typical enactment effects in memory (enhanced memory for actions they have performed compared…

A three year study of digital video creation in higher education investigated the impact that creating short digital videos by university students in their final class of a teacher education program had on those students. Each student created a short video reflecting on the process of how he/she became a teacher. An analysis of the videos…

To clarify the link between anomalous letter processing and developmental dyslexia, we examined the impact of surrounding contours on letter vs. pseudo-letter processing by three groups of children--phonological dyslexics and two controls, one matched for chronological age, the other for reading level--and three groups of adults differing by…

Strain comparison studies have been critical to the identification of novel genetic and molecular mechanisms in learning and memory. However, even within a single learning paradigm, the behavioral data for the same strain can vary greatly, making it difficult to form meaningful conclusions at both the behavioral and cellular level. In fear…

The production effect, the memorial benefit for information read aloud versus silently, has been touted as a simple memory improvement tool. The current experiments were designed to evaluate the relative costs and benefits of production using a free recall paradigm. Results extend beyond prior work showing a production effect only when production…

Effects of feedback on children's self-evaluations are well established, yet little is known about how parents talk with children about everyday successes and failures, despite the importance of parent-child reminiscing in children's psychological understanding. We examine mothers' attributions and performance evaluations in conversations about…

Previous text comprehension studies using the contradiction paradigm primarily tested assumptions of the activation mechanism involved in reading. However, the nature of the contradiction in such studies relied on validation of information in readers' general world knowledge. We directly tested this validation process by varying the strength of…

Numerous studies have suggested a role for ubiquitin-proteasome-mediated protein degradation in learning-dependent synaptic plasticity; however, very little is known about how protein degradation is regulated at the level of the proteasome during memory formation. The ubiquitin-specific protease 14 (USP14) is a proteasomal deubiquitinating enzyme…

Mechanistically distinct forms of long-lasting plasticity and memory can be induced by a variety of different training patterns. Although several studies have identified distinct molecular pathways that are engaged during these different training patterns, relatively little work has explored potential interactions between pathways when they are…