To act and think, children and adults are continually required to ignore irrelevant visual information to focus on task-relevant items. As real-world visual information is organized into structures, we designed a feature visual search task containing 3-level hierarchical stimuli (i.e., local shapes that constituted intermediate shapes that formed…

Attention and working memory are fundamental for selecting and maintaining behaviorally relevant information. Not only do both processes closely intertwine at the cognitive level, but they implicate similar functional brain circuitries, namely the frontoparietal and the frontostriatal networks, which are innervated by cholinergic and dopaminergic…

Examined age-related changes in visual selective attention--ability to resist interference--in children 5 to 12 years old and adults. The interference effect on stimulus evaluation did not discriminate between age groups; however, the interference effect on correct response activation showed a pronounced age-related reduction, suggesting a…

Visual preference technique was found to be a method for exploring the genesis of normal and abnormal selective attention, pattern discrimination, and recognition memory. The study of infants with differing degrees of risk for mental subnormality produced substantial evidence for relationship between early visual selectivities and future…

Eleven papers comprise the special issue on learning disabilities and deal with definition, prevalence, promising research strategies, and potentially effective educational treatments oriented toward the processes of thought and the "learning to learn" strategy. (DB)