Task prioritization can lead to trade-off patterns in dual-task situations. The authors compared dual-task performances in 9- and 11-year-old children and young adults performing a cognitive task and a motor task concurrently. The motor task required balancing on an ankle-disc board. Two cognitive tasks measured working memory and episodic memory…

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers ([Boutla, M., Supalla, T., Newport, E. L., & Bavelier, D.…

The authors compared 6- to 11-year-olds with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and those with specific language impairment (SLI) on measures of memory (verbal and visuospatial short-term and working memory) and learning (reading and mathematics). Children with DCD with typical language skills were impaired in all four areas of memory…

This paper examines the role of age, working memory span and phonological ability in the mastery of ten different grammatical constructions. Six- through eleven-year-old children (n = 68) and adults (n = 19) performed a grammaticality judgment task as well as tests of working memory capacity and receptive phonological ability. Children showed…

This study examines the working memory systems involved in human wayfinding. In the learning phase, 24 participants learned two routes in a novel photorealistic virtual environment displayed on a 220 degrees screen while they were disrupted by a visual, a spatial, a verbal, or--in a control group--no secondary task. In the following wayfinding…

According to the mental-state reasoning model of suggestibility, 2 components of theory of mind mediate reductions in suggestibility across the preschool years. The authors examined whether theory-of-mind performance may be legitimately separated into 2 components and explored the memory processes underlying the associations between theory of mind…

Background: The non-word repetition task (NRT) has gained wide acceptance in describing language acquisition in both children with normal language development (NL) and children with specific language impairments (SLI). This task has gained wide acceptance because it so closely matches the phonological component of word learning, and correlates…

We examined the relationship between rapid naming speed (RAN) and Chinese character recognition accuracy and fluency. Sixty-three grade 2 and 54 grade 4 Taiwanese children were administered four RAN tasks (colors, digits, Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao, characters), and two character recognition tasks. RAN tasks accounted for more reading variance in grade 4 than…

In typical interactions, speakers frequently produce utterances that appear to reflect beliefs about the common ground shared with particular addressees. Horton and Gerrig (2005a) proposed that one important basis for audience design is the manner in which conversational partners serve as cues for the automatic retrieval of associated information…

Two experiments examined whether text composition engages verbal, visual, and spatial working memory to different degrees. In Experiment 1, undergraduate students composed by longhand a persuasive text while performing a verbal, visual, or spatial concurrent task that was presented visually. In Experiment 2, participants performed a verbal or…

Recent psychological and neuropsychological research suggests that executive functions--the cognitive control processes that regulate thought and action--are multifaceted and that different types of executive functions are correlated but separable. The present multivariate twin study of 3 executive functions (inhibiting dominant responses,…

This study outlines the construction of a tool to enhance the competence of foreign language teachers in estimating the effectiveness of language-learning tasks. Five assumptions basic to second-language acquisition are crucial to the design of the tool. Subsequently, drawing on insights from cognitive psychology about information-processing, a…

The authors tested the hypothesis that with adequate practice, people can execute 2 cognitive operations in working memory simultaneously. In Experiment 1, 6 students practiced updating 2 items in working memory through 2 sequences of operations (1 numerical, 1 spatial). In different blocks, imperative stimuli for the 2 sequences of operations…

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and normal controls were tested in three category learning experiments to determine if previously observed rule-based category learning impairments in PD patients were due to deficits in selective attention or working memory. In Experiment 1, optimal categorization required participants to base their decision on a…

The statement matching paradigm was used to examine how 10- to 13-year-olds categorized adults when both ethnicity and gender varied across targets. Forty-seven children watched a PowerPoint presentation of a conversation involving two Black men, two Black women, two White men and two White women. Each slide displayed the speaker's picture, name…