The Latin Square Task (LST) was developed by Birney, Halford, and Andrews [Birney, D. P., Halford, G. S., & Andrews, G. (2006). Measuring the influence of cognitive complexity on relational reasoning: The development of the Latin Square Task. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 66, 146-171.] and represents a non-domain specific,…

Based on the theoretical analysis of self-consciousness concepts, we hypothesized that the spatio-temporal pattern of functional connectivity within the default-mode network (DMN) should persist unchanged across a variety of different cognitive tasks or acts, thus being task-unrelated. This supposition is in contrast with current understanding…

In the current study, we explored the influence of synesthesia on memory for word lists. We tested 10 grapheme-color synesthetes who reported an experience of color when reading letters or words. We replicated a previous finding that memory is compromised when synesthetic color is incongruent with perceptual color. Beyond this, we found that,…

Perceptual decision-making performance depends on several cognitive and neural processes. Here, we fit Ratcliff's diffusion model to accuracy data and reaction-time distributions from one numerical and one verbal two-choice perceptual-decision task to deconstruct these performance measures into the rate of evidence accumulation (i.e., drift rate),…

Are there consequences of calling objects by their names? Lupyan (2008) suggested that overtly labeling objects impairs subsequent recognition memory because labeling shifts stored memory representations of objects toward the category prototype (representational shift hypothesis). In Experiment 1, we show that processing objects at the basic…

Stimulus over-selectivity refers to behavior being controlled by one element of the environment at the expense of other equally salient aspects of the environment. This is a common problem for many individuals, including those with autism spectrum disorders, and learning difficulties, and presents a considerable problem for information processing…

Does extensive practice reduce or eliminate central interference in dual-task processing? We explored the reorganization of task architecture with practice by combining interference analysis (delays in dual-task experiment) and random-walk models of decision making (measuring the decision and non-decision contributions to RT). The main delay…

The present study aimed to investigate the slow negative potential (termed Decision Preceding Negativity, DPN, from the family of the Readiness Potential) which precedes a willed risky decision. To this end, evoked potentials preceding and following an economic choice were measured in a sample of 16 male students during the Iowa Gambling Task…

Research suggests that executive function (EF) may distinguish between children who are well- or ill-prepared for kindergarten; however, little is known about the test-retest reliability of measures of EF for children. We aimed to establish a battery of EF measures that are sensitive to both development and individual differences across the…

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that information about intergroup competition is central to children's representations of social categories. Children (N = 99, 5- and 6-year-olds) were introduced to two novel social categories, which were described as having competing or noncompeting goals, by varying the quantity of a resource in…

Learning a new word consists of two primary tasks that have often been conflated into a single process: "referent selection", in which a child must determine the correct referent of a novel label, and "referent retention", which is the ability to store this newly formed label-object mapping in memory for later use. In addition,…

In this study of the project DyAdd, three aspects of visual attention were investigated in adults (18-55 years) with dyslexia (n = 35) or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n = 22), and in healthy controls (n = 35). Temporal characteristics of visual attention were assessed with Attentional Blink (AB), capacity of visual attention…

Purpose: To investigate whether working memory capacity (WMC) modulates the effects of to-be-ignored speech on the memory of materials conveyed by to-be-attended speech. Method: Two tasks (reading span, Daneman & Carpenter, 1980; Ronnberg et al., 2008; and size-comparison span, Sorqvist, Ljungberg, & Ljung, 2010) were used to measure individual…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate incidental sequence learning across the lifespan. We tested 50 children (aged 7-16), 50 young adults (aged 20-30), and 50 older adults (aged >65) with a sequence learning paradigm that involved both a task and a response sequence. After several blocks of practice, all age groups slowed down…

In representation-rich domains such as organic chemistry, students must be facile and accurate when translating between different 2D representations, such as diagrams. We hypothesized that translating between organic chemistry diagrams would be more accurate when concrete models were used because difficult mental processes could be augmented by…