Foreign language (FL) aptitude generally refers to a specific talent for learning a foreign or second language (L2). After experiencing a long period of marginalized interest, FL aptitude research in recent years has witnessed renewed enthusiasm across the disciplines of educational psychology, second language acquisition (SLA) and cognitive…

The contribution of linguistic and cognitive variables to reading processes might vary depending on the particularities of the languages studied. This view is thought to be particularly true for Arabic which is a diglossic language and has particular orthographic and morpho-syntactic systems. This cross-sectional study examined the contribution of…

This study examined whether attention to a location plays a role in the maintenance of locations in spatial working memory in young children as it does in adults. This study was the first to investigate whether distractors presented during the delay of a spatial working-memory task influenced young children's memory responses. Across 2…

This article explores the use of pre-recorded video mini-lectures to support and enhance traditional face-to-face lectures for undergraduate students. Mini-lectures guide students through key concepts so that they can understand and assimilate key content before attending lectures.

Background: Developing sufficient mathematical skills is a prerequisite to function adequately in society today. Given this, an important task is to increase our understanding regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying young people's acquisition of early number skills and formal mathematical knowledge. Aims: The purpose was to examine whether…

People with acquired brain injury (ABI) present with impairments in working memory and executive functions, and these cognitive deficits contribute to difficulty self-regulating the production of expository writing. Cognitive processes involved in carrying out complex writing tasks include planning, generating text, and reviewing or revising text…

Working memory (WM) is the ability to temporarily store and retrieve a limited amount of information during complex cognitive activities, especially in the face of distraction. The dual-component model describes WM as including active maintenance in primary memory (PM) and cue-dependent search and retrieval from secondary memory (SM). Previously,…

We describe an important elaboration of our multiscale/multiresolution model for solving the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). Our previous model emulated the non-uniform distribution of receptors on the human retina and the shifts of visual attention. This model produced near-optimal solutions of TSP in linear time by performing hierarchical…

The capacity of working memory is limited and is altered in brain disorders including schizophrenia. In rodent working memory tasks, capacity is typically not measured (at least not explicitly). One task that does measure working memory capacity is the odor span task (OST) developed by Dudchenko and colleagues. In separate experiments, the effects…

When learning highly organized sequential patterns of information, humans and nonhuman animals learn rules regarding the hierarchical structures of these sequences. In three experiments, we explored the role of working memory in college students' sequential pattern learning and performance in a computerized task involving a sequential…

The primary purpose of this article is to combine both transfer of learning (hereafter, transfer) and creativity into similar processes that can increase the products of transfer and creativity. Both transfer and creativity operate within reciprocal relationships between memory storage and working memory. Moreover, they are also based on moving…

Two experiments examined the effects of spatial and temporal contiguities in a working memory binding task that required participants to remember coloured objects. In Experiment 1, a black and white drawing and a corresponding phrase that indicated its colour perceptually were either near or far (spatial study condition), while in Experiment 2,…

It is often proposed that individuals with high working memory span overcome proactive interference (PI) from previous trials, saving working memory for task-relevant items. We examined this hypothesis in word-list probe recognition. We found no difference in PI related to span. Instead, ex-Gaussian analysis of reaction time showed speed…

This study examined the roles of first-language (L1) Chinese and second-language (L2) English phonological skills in English and Chinese reading comprehension, respectively, and their association with reading comprehension difficulties among Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. We tested 258 second graders on nonverbal intelligence,…

Weak performance in short-term memory (STM) in children with cochlear implants (CI) may have an impact on vocabulary development. Vocabulary, phonological STM (non-word repetition), phonological/verbal STM (digit span) and rapid naming measures were administered to 15 Greek-speaking children with CI (ages 4;6-8;6) and to chronological age (CA) and…