Research has demonstrated that instruction that relies heavily on studying worked examples is more effective for less experienced learners compared to instruction emphasizing problem solving. However, the guidance associated with studying some worked examples may reduce the performance of more experienced learners. This study investigated…

Four experiments were conducted to test whether conjunction errors were reduced after pictorial encoding and whether the semantic overlap between study and conjunction items would impact error rates. Across 4 experiments, compound words studied with a single-picture had lower conjunction error rates during a recognition test than those words…

In this paper we examine the neurobiological correlates of syntax, the processing of structured sequences, by comparing FMRI results on artificial and natural language syntax. We discuss these and similar findings in the context of formal language and computability theory. We used a simple right-linear unification grammar in an implicit artificial…

Special processes recruited during the recognition of personally familiar people have been assumed to reflect the rich episodic and semantic information that selectively represents each person. However, the processes may also include person nonselective ones, which may require interpretation in terms beyond the memory mechanism. To examine this…

Research examining the importance of surface-level information to familiarity in recognition memory tasks is mixed: Sometimes it affects recognition and sometimes it does not. One potential explanation of the inconsistent findings comes from the ideas of dual process theory of recognition and the transfer-appropriate processing framework, which…

Four studies using a computerized paradigm investigated whether children's imitation performance is content-specific and to what extent dependent on other cognitive processes such as trial-and-error learning, recall, and observational learning. Experiment 1 showed that 3-year-olds could successfully imitate what we call novel cognitive rules…

Fluency, the subjective experience of ease associated with information processing, has been shown to affect a host of judgments. Previous research has typically focused on specific factors that affect the use of a single, specific fluency source. In the present study we examine how cognitive mindsets, or processing modes, moderate fluency…

The neural mechanisms that underlie familiarity memory have been extensively investigated, but a consensus understanding remains elusive. Behavioral evidence suggests that familiarity sometimes shares sources with instances of implicit memory known as priming, in that the same increases in processing fluency that give rise to priming can engender…

Adults across cultures speak to infants in a specific infant-directed manner. We asked whether infants use this manner of speech (infant- or adult-directed) to guide their subsequent visual preferences for social partners. We found that 5-month-old infants encode an individuals' use of infant-directed speech and adult-directed speech, and use this…

Purpose: To investigate whether phonological or semantic encoding cues improved the fast mapping or word learning performance of preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) or typical development (TD) and whether performance varied for words containing high- or low-frequency sublexical sequences that named familiar or unfamiliar objects.…

Effects of culture-specific experience on musical rhythm perception are evident by 12 months of age, but the role of culture-general rhythm processing constraints during early infancy has not been explored. Using a habituation procedure with 5- and 7-month-old infants, we investigated effects of temporal interval ratio complexity on discrimination…

Extensive research has focused on face recognition, and much is known about this topic. However, much of this work seems to be based on an assumption that faces are the most important aspect of person recognition. Here we test this assumption in two experiments. We show that when viewers are forced to choose, they "do" use the face more than the…

Proofreading one's own writing is difficult due to the overfamiliarity of one's writing, which has been claimed to conceal errors, even extraneous errors inserted by someone else (as in collaborative writing). In the present research, we examined whether increasing one's familiarity with text can indeed have a negative influence on error…

When participants must classify their recognition experiences as remembering or knowing, variables often have dissociative effects on the two judgments. In contrast, when participants independently rate recollection "and" familiarity only parallel effects have been reported. To investigate this discrepancy we compared the effects of masked priming…

The authors outline results of 3 studies conducted to examine the structure of disciplinary knowledge from reading measured through proximity data. In Study 1, 168 third-grade students were asked to read a science text and rate the relationships of keywords from the passage. From these ratings, comprehension scores were calculated that related…