It is a prevailing theoretical claim that path integration is the primary means of developing global spatial representations. However, this claim is at odds with reported difficulty to develop global spatial representations of a multiscale environment using path integration. The current study tested a new hypothesis that locally similar but…

Humans have a uniquely sophisticated ability to see past superficial features and to understand the relational structure of the world around us. This ability often requires that we compare structures, finding commonalities and differences across visual depictions that are arranged in space, such as maps, graphs, or diagrams. Although such visual…

Although relational reasoning has been described as a process at the heart of human cognition, the exact character of relational representations remains an open debate. Symbolic-connectionist models of relational cognition suggest that relations are structured representations, but that they are ultimately grounded in feature sets; thus, they…

Models of attentional control usually describe online shifts in control settings that accommodate changing task demands. The current studies suggest that online control over distractor exclusion--a core component of visual selection--can be accomplished without online shifts in top-down settings. Measurements of target discrimination accuracy…

Neglect is an acquired cognitive disorder characterized by a lack of processing of one side of a stimulus or representational space. There are hemispheric asymmetries in its cause and in its effects, but implemented computational models of neglect have tended not to incorporate this fact. The authors report a series of neural network simulations…

Varied conditions under which children aged four to five years matched the area of a rectangle with a given width or height to that of a square. Subjects matched one dimension of the rectangle to one side of the square suggesting that area matches seemed to be based on a side-matching strategy. (Author/AS)