Sensitivity to relationship type and level of need in distributing rewards for work done was investigated with classmates who were best friends, acquaintances, or children with special educational needs (SEN). Children (N = 142) aged 8-11 years completed measures of reward allocation, monitoring of task inputs and belief in a just world (BJW). An…

This study aimed to test the assumption drawn from weak central coherence theory that a central cognitive mechanism is responsible for integrating information at both conceptual and perceptual levels. A visual semantic memory task and a face recognition task measuring use of holistic information were administered to 15 children with autism and 16…

Executive dysfunction is thought to be primary to autism. We examined differences in executive function between 20 adults with autism and learning disability and 23 individuals with learning disabilities outside the autistic spectrum. All participants were matched for chronological age and full-scale IQ, and were given a battery of tasks assessing…

Poor decision-making and executive function deficits are frequently observed in individuals with substance use disorders (SUDs), and executive deficits may contribute to poor decision-making in this population. This study examined the influence of lifetime history of an alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or polysubstance use disorder on decision-making as…

Deficits in social cognition and interaction, such as in mentalizing and imitation behavior, are hallmark features of autism spectrum disorders. Both imitation and mentalizing are at the core of the sense of agency, the awareness that we are the initiators of our own behavior. Little evidence exists regarding the sense of agency in autism. Thus,…

This study examined Theory of Mind in Williams syndrome (WS) and in normal chronological age-matched and mental age-matched control groups, using a picture sequencing task. This task assesses understanding of pretence, intention and false belief, while controlling for social-script knowledge and physical cause-and-effect reasoning. The task was…

Recent work has shown that Whorf effects of language on color discrimination are stronger in the right visual field than in the left. Here we show that this phenomenon is not limited to color: The perception of animal figures (cats and dogs) was more strongly affected by linguistic categories for stimuli presented to the right visual field than…

Two studies were carried out to investigate the effects of presentation of primes showing partial (word-initial) or full overlap on processing of spoken target words. The first study investigated whether time compression would interfere with lexical processing so as to elicit aphasic-like performance in non-brain-damaged subjects. The second study…

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and insular cortex are implicated in distributed neural circuitry that supports emotional decision-making. Previous studies of patients with vmPFC lesions have focused primarily on decision-making under uncertainty, when outcome probabilities are ambiguous (e.g. the Iowa Gambling Task). It remains unclear…

In the course of language development children must solve arbitrary form-to-meaning mappings, in which semantic components are encoded onto linguistic labels. Because sign languages describe motion and location of entities through iconic movements and placement of the hands in space, child signers may find spatial semantics-to-language mapping…

Unexpected auditory stimuli are potent distractors, able to break through selective attention and disrupt performance in an unrelated visual task. This study examined the processing fate of novel sounds by examining the extent to which their semantic content is analyzed and whether the outcome of this processing can impact on subsequent behavior.…

Six pre-service teacher candidates TCs, each engaged in field experiences in Kindergarten or First Grade classrooms at an urban based elementary school compared the impact of interactive read alouds and simple read alouds on children's Tier two vocabulary meaning acquisition and usage. Each TC read a different trade book that contained at least 8…

Scope and Method of Study: This study develops, implements, and evaluates a new economics teaching pedagogy based on the U.S. Army's systems approach to training model. Using the approach, tasks are identified that compose the task domain for the Principles of Microeconomics course. From the 130 identified tasks, 73 are used by Economics of…

Change of first language (L1) status from the most stable language to a less accessible language over the life-span of a bilingual individual is termed "language attrition". Such a shift in ease of L1 access has been reported to affect the lexicon (Pelc, 2001) more than other aspects of language. However, whether L1 attrition is affected by…

The problem: Many previous studies have pointed out that EFL learners tend to face communication breakdowns with native speakers because their traditional classroom and textbooks are not able to provide learners with sufficient pragmatically appropriate input (Bardovi-Harlig, 1996; Rose, 1994, 1997). On the contrary, they are exposed to rich input…