This paper examines the link between cognitive processes and superior performance in contemporary dance. In the first study, thirty-six participants (professional dancers, nonprofessional dancers, and non-dancers) carried out a task in which they were asked to reproduce a sequence of dance steps while being recorded on a camcorder. Analysis…

It is considerably harder to generalize identity across different pictures of unfamiliar faces, compared with familiar faces. This finding hints strongly at qualitatively distinct processing of unfamiliar face stimuli--for which we have less expertise. Yet, the extent to which face selective versus generic visual processes drive outcomes during…

Recent findings have shown that language plays an important role in the acquisition of novel cognitive tasks (van 't Wout & Jarrold, 2020). The current study sought to elucidate the factors that influence the contribution of language to novel task learning, focusing specifically on the role of task complexity (defined by the number of…

Computer-mediated social learning contexts have become increasingly popular over the last few years; yet existing models of students' cognitive-affective states have been slower to adopt dyadic interaction data for predictions. Here, we explore the possibility of capitalizing on the inherently social component of collaborative learning by using…

Background: We present a unique study of adventure sports coaches teaching lead climbing. Expanding existing work on judgement and decision making, we examine the coaching process and the decision making employed to manage the pedagogical and security needs of climbers when they are being introduced to lead climbing. Research design and data…

Integrated test tasks, such as listening-to-speak or reading-to-write, are increasingly used in second language assessment despite relatively limited empirical insights into what they assess. Most research on integrated tasks has primarily focused on the productive skills involved; studies exploring the receptive skills mostly investigated tasks…

There is substantial evidence that populations in the Western world exhibit a local bias compared to East Asian populations that is widely ascribed to a difference between individualistic and collectivist societies. However, we report that traditional Himba--a remote interdependent society--exhibit a strong local bias compared to both Japanese and…

This study investigates the effect of familiar musical distractors on the cognitive performance of introverts and extraverts. Participants completed a verbal, numerical and logic test in three music conditions: vocal music, instrumental music and silence. It was predicted that introverts would perform worse with vocal music, better with…

Many aspects of cognition decline from middle to late adulthood, but the dimensionality and generality of this decline have rarely been examined. We analyzed 20-year longitudinal data of 6203 middle-aged to very old adults from Greater Manchester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Participants were assessed up to eight times on 20 tasks of fluid…

Six young adults practiced for 36 sessions on a working-memory updating task in which 2 digits and 2 spatial positions were continuously updated. Participants either did 1 updating operation at a time, or attempted 1 numerical and 1 spatial operation at the same time. In contrast to previous research using the same paradigm with a single digit and…

It is well established that visual search becomes harder when the similarity between target and distractors is increased and the similarity between distractors is decreased. However, in models of visual search, similarity is typically treated as a static, time-invariant property of the relation between objects. Data from other perceptual tasks…

Previous research on dual-tasks has shown that, under some circumstances, actions impair the perception of action-consistent stimuli, whereas, under other conditions, actions facilitate the perception of action-consistent stimuli. We propose a new model to reconcile these contrasting findings. The planning and control model (PCM) of motorvisual…

Background: Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are characterised by developmentally inappropriate levels of hyperactivity, impulsivity and/or inattention and are particularly impaired when performing tasks that require a high level of cognitive control. Methylphenidate (MPH) and motivational incentives may help improve…

The subjective value of rewards declines as a function of the delay to receive them (temporal discounting). Three temporal discounting tasks that assessed preferences between small amounts of money (10 pence) over short delays (60 s), moderate amounts of money (10 British Pounds) over moderate delays (2 weeks), and large amounts of money (1000…

The fact that language teaching can be operationalized through computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has directed researchers' attention to the learning task, which, in this case, is considered to be the unit that demands analysis of the communicative processes in which the learner is involved while working with CALL. Research focuses on…