Across several measures, the interracial and intra-racial views of 7- and 9-year-old African-American children were examined. Overall, children showed more negative views toward other African-Americans, labeling pictures of African-American children with more negative adjectives than pictures of European-American children. Children displayed more…

This study investigated the construction of a spatial model in relation to working memory (WM) and visuospatial abilities. Participants were trained to use either imagery or verbal strategies to process route spatial texts. Results obtained on a free recall task, a verification test and a graphic representation task showed the beneficial effect of…

Early reading and spelling abilities in children from Ireland and Sweden with severe speech and physical impairment (SSPI) were studied and compared. The aim was to look for similarities as well as for differences that could be related to the different linguistic environments. Both group consisted of 15 children, and were matched on linguistic…

Increased second-language (L2) proficiency is associated with a shift from explicit to implicit processing; however, the neural underpinnings are of this shift are not well understood. Furthermore, it is known that unaccusative verbs cause persistent difficulties in L2 learning. In this study, behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) responses…

Verbal overshadowing is the later disruption of recognition memory resulting from prior verbal recall of the memory. Cognitive psychologists in the field of criminal justice have studied the effect since 1990 due to its ramifications in eyewitness testimony. Because of its short history of research, the effects of verbal overshadowing in the…

Previous research demonstrates enhanced speech perception abilities for typically hearing and hearing-impaired listeners when speakers use clear versus plain speech, particularly in the presence of background noise. To date, very few studies have investigated the effects of noise on word learning and no studies have examined the effects of clear…

Teaching students the most frequent sounds of the alphabet letters is the first crucial step in good phonics instruction. But beginning letter and sound lessons, especially if poorly taught or too rapidly paced, can be overwhelming and confusing for some young children and struggling readers. How can we simplify the cognitive task for such…

Results from a 2-year longitudinal study of 181 children from 4th through 5th grade are reported. Levels of growth in children's computation, word problem, and estimation skills by means of common fractions were predicted by working memory, attentive classroom behavior, conceptual knowledge about fractions, and simple arithmetic fluency.…

In early childhood, there is a developmental transition in spatial memory biases. Before the transition, children's memory responses are biased toward the midline of a space, while after the transition responses are biased away from midline. The Dynamic Field Theory (DFT) posits that changes in neural interaction and changes in how children…

Discrimination and recognition are often poorer for other-race than own-race faces. These other-race effects (OREs) have traditionally been attributed to reduced perceptual expertise, resulting from more limited experience, with other-race faces. However, recent findings suggest that sociocognitive factors, such as reduced motivation to…

Neuro-imaging studies of intelligence implicate the importance of a parietal-frontal network. One unresolved issue is whether this network underlies a general factor of intelligence ("g") or other specific cognitive factors. A second unresolved issue is whether males and females use different parts of this network. Here we obtained intelligence…

Aim: Epilepsy is associated with difficulties in cognition and behavior in children. These problems have been attributed to genetics, ongoing seizures, psychosocial issues, underlying abnormality of the brain, and/or antiepileptic drugs. In a previous study, we found baseline cognitive differences between children with partial versus generalized…

Behavioral and functional neuroimaging studies indicate deficits in verbal working memory (WM) and frontoparietal dysfunction in individuals with dyslexia. Additionally, structural brain abnormalities in dyslexics suggest a dysconnectivity of brain regions associated with phonological processing. However, little is known about the functional…

Aim: Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) are at risk of developing neurocognitive problems. However, as these problems are usually identified after cardiac surgery, it is unclear whether they resulted from the surgery or whether they pre-existed and hence might be explained by complications and events associated with the heart disease…

The experiment investigated the benefit to second language (L2) sentence comprehension of priming word meanings with brief visual exposure to first language (L1) translation equivalents. Native English speakers learning Mandarin evaluated the validity of aurally presented Mandarin sentences. For selected words in half of the sentences there was…