The relationship between language switching and task switching has been well studied in bilingualism literature. This study employs novel experiments involving magnitude-parity switching and transparency-orientation switching and compares the costs associated with these two types of task switching with language switching. Switching costs and the…

This paper adopts an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to analyze the social organization of the instruction-giving sequences that were accomplished by a teacher of Italian as a foreign language during the last phase of a writing task conducted in pairs. Specifically, the paper explores the linguistic, prosodic and embodied…

Spelling is influenced by implicit cues, but less is known about variability in this reliance. We assessed whether the influence of three implicit cues on Dutch past tense spelling was moderated by grade, literacy, and format. An Auditory infinitive, Written infinitive, and Picture+cloze format was completed by 68 third-graders and 47…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a set of generic prompting principles and a framework of prompts that have the potential to foster learning and skill acquisition among adult novices when performing complex, ill-structured problems. Design/methodology/approach: Relevant research in the literatures surrounding problem structure,…

The contiguity effect refers to the tendency to recall an item from nearby study positions of the just recalled item. Causal models of contiguity suggest that recalled items are used as probes, causing a change in the memory state for subsequent recall attempts. Noncausal models of the contiguity effect assume the memory state is unaffected by…

Judgments of learning (JOLs) are assessments of how well materials have been learned. Although a wide body of literature has demonstrated a reliable correlation between memory performance and JOLs, relatively little is known about the nature of this link. Here, we investigate the relationship between JOLs and the memory retrieval processes engaged…

In this study, we investigate whether multiple digits can be processed at a semantic level without awareness, either serially or in parallel. In two experiments, we presented participants with two successive sets of four simultaneous Arabic digits. The first set was masked and served as a subliminal prime for the second, visible target set.…

There is extensive evidence that emotional--especially threatening--stimuli rapidly capture attention. These findings are often explained in terms of a hard-wired and relatively inflexible fear module. We propose an alternative, more flexible mechanism, arguing that motivational relevance is the crucial factor driving rapid attentional orienting.…

Visual communication cues facilitate interpersonal communication. It is important that we look at faces to retrieve and subsequently process such cues. It is also important that we sometimes look away from faces as they increase cognitive load that may interfere with online processing. Indeed, when typically developing individuals hold face gaze…

Four experiments explored the role of contexts in information retrieval after different levels of acquisition training in human predictive learning. Participants were trained where cue (X) was followed by an outcome in context A while a different cue (Y) was followed by the absence of the outcome in context B. When 4 training trials with each cue…

Interference from previously learned information, known as proactive interference (PI), limits our memory retrieval abilities. Previous studies of PI resolution have focused on the role of short-term familiarity, or recency, in causing PI. In the present study, we investigated the impact of long-term stimulus familiarity on PI resolution…

Body movement provides a rich source of cues about other people's goals and intentions. In the present research, we investigate how well people can distinguish between different social intentions on the basis of movement information. Participants observed a model reaching toward and grasping a wooden block with the intent to cooperate with a…

We validate an eye-tracking method applicable for studying memory processes in complex cognitive tasks. The method is tested with a task on probabilistic inferences from memory. It provides valuable data on the time course of processing, thus clarifying previous results on heuristic probabilistic inference. Participants learned cue values of…

Object substitution masking (OSM) is typically studied using a brief search display. The target item may be indicated by a cue/mask surrounding but not overlapping it. Report of the target is reduced when mask offset trails target offset rather than being simultaneous with it. We report 5 experiments investigating whether OSM can be obtained if…

Alzheimer's disease (AD) can impair metacognition in addition to more basic cognitive functions like memory. However, while global metacognitive inaccuracies are well documented (i.e., low deficit awareness, or anosognosia), the evidence is mixed regarding the effects of AD on local or task-based metacognitive judgments. Here we investigated local…