Investigations of concurrent task and modality switching effects have to date been studied under conditions of uni-modal stimulus presentation. As such, it is difficult to directly compare resultant task and modality switching effects, as the stimuli afford both tasks on each trial, but only one modality. The current study investigated task and…

Studies show that as we enter older adulthood (greater than 64 years), our ability to mentally represent action in the form of using motor imagery declines. Using a chronometry paradigm to compare the movement duration of imagined and executed movements, we tested young-, middle-aged, and older adults on their ability to perform sequential finger…

The present study investigated the impact of study-test similarity on face recognition by manipulating, in the same experiment, the expression change (same vs. different) and the task-processing context (inclusion vs. exclusion instructions) as within-subject variables. Consistent with the dual-process framework, the present results showed that…

Two experiments extend the ecological validity of tests of hemispheric interaction in three novel ways. First, we present a broad class of naturalistic stimuli that have not yet been used in tests of hemispheric interaction. Second, we test whether probable differences in complexity within the class of stimuli are supported by outcomes from…

An issue of continued debate in the visuomotor control literature surrounds whether a 2D object serves as a representative proxy for a 3D object in understanding the nature of the visual information supporting grasping control. In an effort to reconcile this issue, we examined the extent to which aperture profiles for grasping 2D and 3D objects…

The neural correlates of cognitive control for typically developing 9-year-old children were examined using dense-array ERPs and estimates of cortical activation (LORETA) during a go/no-go task with two conditions: a neutral picture condition and an affectively charged picture condition. Activation was estimated for the entire cortex after which…

In this study we quantify for the first time electrophysiological components associated with incorporating long-term semantic knowledge with visuo-spatial information using two variants of a traditional matrix patterns task. Results indicated that the matrix task with greater semantic content was associated with enhanced accuracy and RTs in a…

The visual system has the remarkable ability to generalize across different viewpoints and exemplars to recognize abstract categories of objects, and to discriminate between different viewpoints and exemplars to recognize specific instances of particular objects. Behavioral experiments indicate the critical role of the right hemisphere in…

Emotionally arousing information is treated in a specialised manner across a number of different processing stages, and memory for affective events is often found to be heightened by virtue of this. However, in some cases, emotional experiences might be the very ones that we would like to forget. Here, two item-method directed forgetting studies…

Fluctuating sex hormone levels during the menstrual cycle have been shown to affect functional cerebral asymmetries in cognitive domains. These effects seem to result from the neuromodulatory properties of sex hormones and their metabolites on interhemispheric processing. The present study was carried out to investigate whether functional cerebral…

The present study applied the Simon effect task to examine the pattern of functional brain reorganization in individuals with Friedreich ataxia (FRDA), using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Thirteen individuals with FRDA and 14 age and sex matched controls participated, and were required to respond to either congruent or incongruent…

Previous studies have asked whether visual sensitivity and attentional processing in deaf signers are enhanced or altered as a result of their different sensory experiences during development, i.e., auditory deprivation and exposure to a visual language. In particular, deaf and hearing signers have been shown to exhibit a right visual field/left…

Sometimes object detection as opposed to identification is sufficient to initiate the appropriate action. To explore the neural origin of behavioural differences between the two tasks, we combine psychophysical measurements and fMRI, specifically contrasting shape detection versus identification of a figure. This figure consisted of Gabor elements…

Developmental studies have demonstrated that cognitive processes such as attention, suppression of interference and memory develop throughout childhood and adolescence. However, little is currently known about the development of top-down control mechanisms and their influence on cognitive performance. In the present study, we used functional…

Research investigating hemispheric asymmetries in meaning selection using homophonic homographs (e.g., "bank"), suggests that the left hemisphere (LH) quickly selects contextually relevant meanings, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) maintains a broader spectrum of meanings including those that are contextually irrelevant (e.g., Faust & Chiarello,…