Predictive coding theories of autism suggest that symptoms could result from an atypical learning of expectations. We assessed whether adults with autism could learn expectations in an uncertain context. Twenty-nine neurotypicals and 25 autistic adults participated in an associative learning task. After hearing a tone, participants had to predict…

Contextual cueing refers to the guidance of search by associative learning of the location of task-relevant target items in relation to the consistent arrangement of distractor ("context") items in the search display. The present study investigated whether such target-distractor associations could also be formed in a cross-modal search…

Extracting the statistical regularities present in the environment is a central learning mechanism in infancy. For instance, infants are able to learn the associations between simultaneously or successively presented visual objects (Fiser & Aslin, 2002; Kirkham, Slemmer & Johnson, 2002). The present study extends these results by…

It is well documented in the cognitive literature that visual stimuli create strong memory connections (Shapiro & Waters, 2005). In L2 research, mnemonic devices have been found to be a relevant factor in the development of vocabulary learning (Sagarra & Alba, 2006). However, the extent to which visual cues are needed in the association of…

Attentional theories of associative learning and categorization propose that learning about the predictiveness of a stimulus influences the amount of attention that is paid to that stimulus. Three experiments tested this idea by looking at the extent to which stimuli that had previously been experienced as predictive or nonpredictive in a…

We explored 12-month-olds' flexibility in accepting phonotactically illegal or ill-formed word forms in a modified associative-learning task. Sixty-four English-learning infants were presented with a training phase that either clarified the purpose of a sound--object association task or left the task ambiguous. Infants were then habituated to sets…

Task-cuing experiments are usually intended to explore control of task set. But when small stimulus sets are used, they plausibly afford learning of the response associated with a combination of cue and stimulus, without reference to tasks. In 3 experiments we presented the typical trials of a task-cuing experiment: a cue (colored shape) followed,…

In 7 experiments, we explored the role of retrieval in associative updating, that is, in incorporating new information into an associative memory. We tested the hypothesis that retrieval would facilitate incorporating a new contextual detail into a learned association. Participants learned 3 pieces of information--a person's face, name, and…

Research has demonstrated that children use different strategies to infer a referent. One of these strategies is to use inflectional morphology. We present evidence that toddlers learning Spanish are capable of using gender word inflections to infer word reference. Thirty-month-olds were tested in a preferential looking experiment. Participants…

How do the characteristics of sounds influence the allocation of visual-spatial attention? Natural sounds typically change in frequency. Here we demonstrate that the direction of frequency change guides visual-spatial attention more strongly than the average or ending frequency, and provide evidence suggesting that this cross-modal effect may be…

The aim of this study was to examine the combined influences of infants' attention and use of social cues in the prediction of their language outcomes. This longitudinal study measured infants' visual attention on a distractibility task (11 months), joint attention (14 months), and language outcomes (word-object association, 14 months; MBCDI…

The ability to learn visual-phonological associations is a unique predictor of word reading, and individuals with developmental dyslexia show impaired ability in learning these associations. In this study, we compared developmentally dyslexic and nondyslexic adults on their ability to form cross-modal associations (or "bindings") based…

Two lexical decision experiments examined the joint effects of stimulus quality, semantic context, and cue-target associative strength when all factors were intermixed in a block of trials. Both experiments found a three-way interaction. Semantic context and stimulus quality interacted when associative strength between cue-target pairs was strong,…

The authors investigated depth-of-processing effects on conceptual priming by comparing incidental (implicit) and intentional (explicit) tests of word association. In Experiment 1, depth of processing at study influenced priming of weak and medium associates but not of strong associates. In Experiment 2, depth of processing influenced priming of…

Low-frequency words produce more hits and fewer false alarms than high-frequency words in a recognition task. The low-frequency hit rate advantage has sometimes been attributed to processes that operate during the recognition test (e.g., L. M. Reder et al., 2000). When tasks other than recognition, such as recall, cued recall, or associative…