This study sought to further explain the association between general anxiety symptoms and impaired problem-solving by testing whether this occurs, in part, through a reduced ability to retrieve event-level, specific autobiographical memory (AM). Participants (N = 301; M age = 28.2 SD = 7.7, 55.8% female) completed assessments of the retrieval of…

There is currently a hot debate in the literature regarding whether or not infants have a true theory of mind (ToM) understanding. According to the mentalistic view, infants possess the same false belief understanding that older children have but their competence is masked by task demands. On the other hand, others have proposed that preverbal…

The mature visual system condenses complex scenes into simple summary statistics (e.g., average size, location, orientation, etc.). However, children, often perform poorly on perceptual averaging tasks. Children's difficulties are typically thought to represent the suboptimal implementation of an adult-like strategy. This paper examines another…

The present study investigated the influence of mood state (positive vs. negative) on the cognitive control process of conflict adaptation. A task-switching paradigm was applied, allowing to assess conflict adaptation both within tasks and across tasks. A success-failure manipulation was applied for mood induction. Within-task conflict adaptation…

Propositional attitude verbs, such as "think" and "want," have long held interest for both theoretical linguists and language acquisitionists because their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties display complex interactions that have proven difficult to fully capture from either perspective. This paper explores the…

Research suggests that individual differences in math abilities correlate with approximate representations of quantity that are supported by a primitive Approximate Number System (ANS). However, relatively little research has addressed the direction of this association in early childhood. Here we examined the development of the ANS and math…

Elementary schoolchildren's working memory performance (WMP) fluctuates from moment to moment and day to day, yet the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. In the present study, affective states were investigated as predictors of these fluctuations. Interindividual differences in the intraindividual affect--WMP associations were expected,…

Both creativity and humor are high-level cognitive functions and complex concepts. Although creativity and humor are generally deemed positively correlated, it has been difficult to explicitly identify their relationship with each other. The cognitive process of creativity includes divergent thinking, insight, and remote association, whereas humor…

This study explored how task complexity, writing behaviors (i.e., pausing and revision behaviors), and writing performance (i.e., task completion, coherence and cohesion, language use, and expression and tone) influence and relate to each other. Thirty advanced-level Korean EFL undergraduates completed writing tasks differing in complexity. A…

From the perspective of complexity theory and based on Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis and the Triadic Componential Framework, this paper investigated the effect of manipulating task complexity along resource-dispersing dimension on L2 written performance. The results showed that: 1) Significant interactive effects were found between the two…

Background: The presence of red appears to hamper adults' cognitive performance relative to other colours (see Elliot & Maier, 2014, "Ann. Rev. Psychol." 65, 95). Aims and sample: Here, we investigate whether colour affects cognitive performance in 8- and 9-year-olds. Method: Children completed a battery of tasks once in the presence…

This study examined the associations of preschool children's executive function (EF) and learning behaviour (CLB) with their concurrent academic skills and the role of CLB as a mediator for the EF-academic skills link. One hundred seventy-nine children were assessed on EF and math and literacy skills. Parents and teachers completed a questionnaire…

Purpose: Emotional verbal fluency (Emo-VF) has the potential to expand neuropsychological assessment by providing information about affective memory retrieval. The usability of Emo-VF is limited, however, by significant variations in task administration and the lack of information about Emo-VF responses. This study investigated verbal productivity…

Background: The worked example effect in cognitive load theory suggests that providing worked examples first followed by solving similar problems would facilitate students' learning. Using problem solving-worked example sequence is another way of implementing example-based instruction. Although research has demonstrated the superiority of worked…

Native speakers strongly disprefer novel formulations when a conventional alternative expresses the same intended message, presumably because the more conventional form competes with the novel form. In five studies, second language (L2) speakers were less influenced by competing alternatives than native speakers. L2 speakers accepted novel…