Fidget spinners have experienced a rapid rise in popularity, at least partially because they are marketed as attentional aides with the potential to enhance student learning. In the current study, college-aged students watched educational videos while either using a fidget spinner or not. Using a fidget spinner was associated with increased…

Previous research with typically developing children and adults shows that active control of the learning experience leads to enhanced episodic memory, as compared with conditions lacking this control. The present study investigates whether similar advantages can be found in children with autism spectrum disorder. In this study, 6-12-year-old…

Averting gaze from another person's face generally improves cognitive performance, yet, little is known about how witnesses' gaze direction affects their recall during investigative interviews. Here, participants witnessed a video-recorded incident, and were interviewed via free recall and closed questions following a short delay. In Experiment 1,…

Through a close reading of five nineteenth-century instructional books in the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, this essay examines the relationship between new print technologies, memory, teaching, and learning. The article beings with a discussion of Comenius's seventeenth-century "Orbis Pictus," considered the first…

Research that examines generalist preservice teachers' memories from the viewpoint of a specific subject is scarce. As generalist teachers' self-efficacy varies between subjects, subject-oriented research is needed. This qualitative study explores the meaningful memories of visual arts education for twenty-one preservice generalist teachers in…

Investigations of face identification have typically focussed on matching faces to photographic IDs. Few researchers have considered the task of searching for a face in a crowd. In Experiment 1, we created the Chokepoint Search Test to simulate real-time search for a target. Performance on this test was poor (39% accuracy) and showed moderate…

A beneficial effect of physical activity on cognitive functioning is supposed, although to a certain extent, literature remains inconsistent. Furthermore, the mediating effect of aerobic fitness on this association remains unclear, especially in children. This review presents data from 26 articles on the relation between aerobic fitness and…

Learning language requires acquiring the grammatical categories of words in the language, but learning those categories requires understanding the role of words in the syntax. In this study, we examined how this chicken and egg problem is resolved by learners of an artificial language comprising nouns, verbs, adjectives, and case markers following…

The current paper presents two experiments investigating the effect of presence versus absence of compulsory number marking in a native language on a speaker's ability to recall number information from photos. In Experiment 1, monolingual English and Japanese adults were shown a sequence of 110 photos after which they were asked questions about…

Background: Early patterning competence has recently been identified as an important precursor of mathematical development. Whereas the focus of this research has been on children's ability regarding repeating patterns, children might also differ in their spontaneous attention to patterns. Aims: The present study aimed to explore 4- to 5-year…

This essay considers what viewing performance as an affective encounter--an embodied experience of sensations and intensities--might mean for applied theatre. Using auto-theory, which joins personal narrative with theories of affect, new materialism and post-humanism, we write an affective encounter that catches up people and objects in relations…

Problem solving abilities are critical components of contemporary Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. Research in the area of problem solving has uncovered much about the representation, processes and heuristic approaches to problem solving. However, critics claim this overemphasis on the process of solving problems…

The testing effect is 1 of several memory effects moderated by experimental design, such that the effect on free recall is larger in a mixed-list than pure-list design (Mulligan, Susser, & Smith, 2016). The current experiments assess hypotheses regarding why this pattern is found. Three extant accounts of design effects (Nguyen & McDaniel,…

A cognitive-energetic account of individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and sustained attention performance is proposed suggesting that variation in the voluntary control of the intensity of attention (intrinsic alertness) is critical for the relation between WMC and attention control. Four experiments examining individual…

Objective: Of current interest in aphasia research is the relevance of what we can learn from studying word learning ability in aphasia. In a preliminary study, we addressed 2 issues related to the novel word learning ability of individuals with aphasia. First, as word learning engages large-scale cognitive-linguistic systems (language skills,…