The NMDA receptor partial agonist d-cycloserine (DCS) enhances the extinction of learned fear in rats and exposure therapy in humans with anxiety disorders. Despite these benefits, little is known about the mechanisms by which DCS promotes the loss of fear. The present study examined whether DCS augments extinction retention (1) through reductions…

Using a combination of eye tracking and fMRI in a contextual cueing task, we explored the mechanisms underlying the facilitation of visual search for repeated spatial configurations. When configurations of distractors were repeated, greater activation in the right hippocampus corresponded to greater reductions in the number of saccades to locate…

According to the cognitive cascade hypothesis, age-related slowing results in decreased working memory, which in turn affects higher-order cognition. Because recent studies show complex associative learning correlates highly with fluid intelligence, the present study examined the role of complex associative learning in cognitive cascade models of…

The present research demonstrates that very brief variations in affect, being around 1 s in length and changing from trial to trial independently from semantic relatedness of primes and targets, modulate the amount of semantic priming. Implementing consonant and dissonant chords (Experiments 1 and 5), naturalistic sounds (Experiment 2), and visual…

We examined whether 12-month-old infants privilege words over other linguistic stimuli in an associative learning task. Sixty-four infants were presented with sets of either word-object, communicative sound-object, or consonantal sound-object pairings until they habituated. They were then tested on a "switch" in the sound to determine whether they…

The conflict monitoring account posits that globally high levels of conflict trigger engagement of top-down control; however, recent findings point to the mercurial nature of top-down control in high conflict contexts. The current study examined the potential moderating effect of associative learning on conflict-triggered top-down control…

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is known to contribute to memory processes such as encoding representations into long-term-memory (LTM) and retrieving these representations from LTM. However, the details of the PFC's contribution to LTM processes are not well known. To examine the characteristics of the PFC's contribution to LTM processes, we analyzed…

Genetic studies in "Drosophila" have revealed two separable long-term memory pathways defined as anesthesia-resistant memory (ARM) and long-lasting long-term memory (LLTM). ARM is disrupted in "radish" ("rsh") mutants, whereas LLTM requires CREB-dependent protein synthesis. Although the downstream effectors of ARM and LLTM are distinct, pathways…

The purpose of the current study is to determine biology student teachers' cognitive structures on the concept of microscope. Qualitative research methodology has been applied in the study. The data were collected from biology student teachers. Free word association test and drawing-writing test were used to collect data. The data collected were…

Results from fMRI have strongly supported the idea that the ventrolateral PFC (VLPFC) contributes to successful memory formation, but the role the dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) in memory encoding is more controversial. Some findings suggest that the DLPFC is recruited when one is processing relationships between items in working memory, and this…

Contextual stimulus control over instrumental drug-seeking behavior relies on the reconsolidation of context-response-drug associative memories into long-term memory storage following retrieval-induced destabilization. According to previous studies, the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and dorsal hippocampus (DH) regulate cocaine-related memory…

Metonymies are exemplary models for complex semantic association processes at the sentence level. We investigated processing of metonymies using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During an 1.5 Tesla fMRI scan, 14 healthy subjects (12 female) read 124 short German sentences with either literal (like "Africa is arid"),…

Recent studies show that a new strategy called differential-associative processing is effective for learning related concepts; however, our knowledge about differential-associative processing is still limited. Therefore the goals of the present study are to assess the duration of knowledge that is acquired from using differential-associative…

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the various neurocognitive processes concomitant to reading by attempting to identify various subtypes of reading disorders in a referred sample. Participants were 216 elementary school students in grades two through five who were given select subtests of the Woodcock Johnson-III Tests of…

In this study, we examined the nature of infants' representations of newly encountered word forms. Using a word-object association task, we taught 14-month-olds novel three-syllable words differing in segments and stress patterns. At test, we manipulated the stress pattern of the word or the position of the stressed syllable in the word. Our…