As science and technology rapidly progress, it becomes increasingly important to understand how individuals comprehend expository technical texts that explain these advances. This study examined differences in individual readers' technical comprehension performance and differences among texts, using functional brain imaging to measure regional…

An important issue in second-language acquisition concerns the role of explicit information (EI) and how it is affected by individual differences. The present study explored this question through a partial replication and extension of Fernández (2008: Experiment 2), which investigated the effects of EI in processing instruction (PI) for the…

Prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to execute an intention in the future, is critical for the performance of everyday tasks important for independence and quality of life. PM failures are associated with negative health, financial, and social outcomes, and are more frequent with increased age and can be even greater for older adults…

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and behaviors or interests. Besides behavioral, psychopharmacological and biomedical interventions there is increasing evidence of non-invasive treatments like neurofeedback (NFB) that can improve brain…

There is growing evidence for the impact of arts engagement on later life cognition. However, confounding by socioeconomic factors may have led to an overestimation of this association. We analyzed data from 4,344 older adults in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. We measured participatory (e.g. painting, making music, crafts) and receptive (e.g.…

Automatic essay scoring (AES) is an essential educational application in natural language processing. This automated process will alleviate the burden by increasing the reliability and consistency of the assessment. With the advances in text embedding libraries and neural network models, AES systems achieved good results in terms of accuracy.…

Our main objective was to analyze the role of imageability in relation to the age of acquisition (AoA) of nouns and verbs in Spanish-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS) and their peers with typical development (TD). The AoA of nouns and verbs was determined using the MacArthur-Bates CDIs adapted to the profile of children with DS. The AoA…

Long-term memory knowledge is considered to impact short-term maintenance of item information in working memory, as opposed to short-term maintenance of serial order information. Evidence supporting an impact of semantic knowledge on serial order maintenance remains weak. In the present study, we demonstrate that semantic knowledge can impact the…

Fear-motivated avoidance extinction memory is prone to hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)-dependent reconsolidation upon recall. Here, we show that extinction memory recall activates mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) in dorsal CA1, and that post-recall inhibition of this kinase hinders avoidance extinction memory persistence…

Remembering is not a static process: When retrieved, a memory can be destabilized and become prone to modifications. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in a number of brain regions, but the neuronal mechanisms that rule memory destabilization and its boundary conditions remain elusive. Using two distinct computational models that combine…

Purpose: Morse code as a form of communication became widely used for telegraphy, radio and maritime communication, and military operations, and remains popular with ham radio operators. Some skilled users of Morse code are able to comprehend a full sentence as they listen to it, while others must first transcribe the sentence into its written…

The paper presents the memory conformity effect phenomenon, which assumes that information about the same event that a witness acquires from another witness (misinformation) is incorporated into the first witness' memory of the event (original information). The study has two goals: (1) to verify the existence of people with the memory conformity…

Encoding variability refers to the situation in which repeated items are processed in different ways on each presentation. Superior memory performance resulting from encoding variability is sometimes argued to underlie important phenomena in human memory such as the spacing effect. However, the memory benefits of encoding variability are often…

Human cognition exhibits a striking degree of variability: Sometimes we rapidly forge new associations whereas at other times new information simply does not stick. Correlations between neural activity during encoding and subsequent retrieval performance have implicated such "subsequent memory effects" (SMEs) as important for…

Key areas of the episodic memory (EM) network demonstrate changing structure and volume during adolescence. EM is multifaceted and yet studies of EM thus far have largely examined single components, used different methods and have unsurprisingly yielded inconsistent results. The Treasure Hunt task is a single paradigm that allows parallel…