Consolidation is a time-dependent process that is responsible for the storage of information in long-term memory. As such, it plays a crucial role in motor learning. Prior research suggests that some consolidation processes are triggered only when the learner experiences some success during practice. In the present study, we tested whether…

The present study examined the impact of divided attention on children's and adults' neutral and negative true and false memories in a standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Children (7- and 11-year-olds; n = 126) and adults (n = 52) received 5 neutral and 5 negative Deese/Roediger-McDermott word lists; half of each group also received a…

Cognitive autism research is mainly focusing on children and young adults even though we know that autism is a life-long disorder and that healthy aging already has a strong impact on cognitive functioning. We compared the neuropsychological profile of 23 individuals with autism and 23 healthy controls (age range 51-83 years). Deficits were…

Although visual functions have been proposed to be enhanced in deaf individuals, empirical studies have not yet established clear evidence on this issue. The present study aimed to determine whether deaf children with diverse communication modes had superior visual memory and whether their performance was improved by the use of differential…

Although statistical learning and language have been assumed to be intertwined, this theoretical presupposition has rarely been tested empirically. The present study investigates the relationship between statistical learning and language using a within-subject design embedded in an individual-differences framework. Participants were administered…

The hypothesis that language plays a role in theory-of-mind (ToM) development is supported by a number of lines of evidence (e.g., H. Lohmann & M. Tomasello, 2003). The current study sought to further investigate the relations between maternal language input, memory for false sentential complements, cognitive flexibility, and the development of…

Converging findings in psychology, neuroscience, education, and economics suggests that child persistence in learning represents an important determinant of academic success during the school years. Nevertheless, the developmental origins of productive learning behaviors are not well understood. Some findings suggest that executive function skills…

In school, at least in the US, we were taught to multiply by hand according to a standard algorithm. Most people find that algorithm difficult to use, and many children fail to learn it. We propose a new way to make sense of this difficulty: to treat explicit computation as perceptually supported physical and mental action. Based on recent work in…

Executive functions (EF) and intelligence are of critical importance to success in many everyday tasks. Working memory, or updating, which is one latent variable identified in confirmatory factor analytic models of executive functions, predicts intelligence (both fluid and crystallised) in adults, but inhibition and shifting do not (Friedman et…

When using modern educational technology, some forms of instruction are inherently transient in that previous information usually disappears to be replaced by current information. Instructional animations and spoken text provide examples. The effects of transience due to the use of animation-based instructions (Experiment 1) and spoken information…

This paper reports on a study undertaken with the primary aim of investigating the role of wonder in the learning process. The study was carried out by a 9th grade science teacher in collaboration with a university professor. The teacher taught two classrooms of 27 and 30 students respectively, by trying to evoke a sense of wonder only in one of…

The main aim of this research was to study whether memory dynamics influence older people's choices to the same extent as younger's ones. To do so, we adapted the retrieval-practice paradigm to produce variations in memory accessibility of information on which decisions were made later. Based on previous results, we expected to observe…

Although our understanding of children's psychological outcomes following intensive care lags significantly behind advances in medicine, there is a growing awareness that intensive care admission impacts children beyond the boundaries of physical well-being. Intensive care presents a variety of disease-related, treatment-related, and…

Prior work on organization in free recall has focused on the ways in which semantic and temporal information determine the order in which material is retrieved from memory. Tulving's theory of ecphory suggests that these organizational effects arise from the interaction of a retrieval cue with the contents of memory. Using the…

The authors provide evidence that long-term memory encoding can occur for briefly viewed objects in a rapid serial visual presentation list, contrary to claims that the brief presentation and quick succession of objects prevent encoding by disrupting a memory consolidation process that requires hundreds of milliseconds of uninterrupted processing.…