A prominent finding in recognition memory is that studied items are associated with more variability in memory strength than new items. Here, we test 3 competing theories for why this occurs--the "encoding variability," "attention failure", and "recollection" accounts. Distinguishing among these theories is critical…

Purpose: To determine whether word learning problems associated with developmental language impairment (LI) reflect deficits in encoding or subsequent remembering of forms and meanings. Method: Sixty-nine 18-to 25-year-olds with LI or without (the normal development [ND] group) took tests to measure learning of 16 word forms and meanings…

Recent studies have shown that the metacognitive judgments adults infer from their experiences of encoding effort vary in accordance with their naive theories of intelligence. To determine whether this finding extends to elementary schoolchildren, a study was conducted in which 27 third graders (M[subscript age] = 8.27) and 24 fifth graders…

In this forum, I take a learning sciences perspective to examine the paper by Bellocchi, Ritchie, Tobin, Sandhu and Sandhu ("Cultural Studies of Science Education," doi:10.1007/s11422-013-9526-3, 2013) titled "Examining emotional climate of preservice science teacher education." I characterize their approach as a social…

Using more complex items than those commonly employed within the information-processing approach, but still easier than those used in intelligence tests, this study analyzed how the association between processing speed and accuracy level changes as the difficulty of the items increases. The study involved measuring cognitive ability using Raven's…

The scholarly literature about the process of second language (L2) learning has focused to a considerable extent on cognitive processes. Left aside are questions about how emotions fit into an understanding of L2 learning. One goal of this plenary is to demonstrate that we have limited our understanding of L2 learning by failing to take into…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were utilized in an investigation of 21 six-month-olds' attention to and processing of global and local properties of hierarchical patterns. Overall, infants demonstrated an advantage for processing the overall configuration (i.e., global properties) of local features of hierarchical patterns; however,…

Background: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) show particular difficulty comprehending and producing object ("Who did the bear follow?") relative to subject ("Who followed the tiger?") "wh"-questions. Aims: To determine if school-age children with SLI, relative to children with typical development (TD),…

Some studies conducted on ADHD have found a statistically significant relationship between those diagnosed with the disorder and a higher susceptibility to abuse alcohol. However, other studies have found no such correlation, or have found this to be true of only a nonstatistically significant subset of the population of individuals with ADHD.…

Typically developing toddlers accurately follow an adult's gaze learn object labels. However, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) mis-map new words to their own focus of attention. Children with ASD and typical development participated in three word learning conditions. In the follow-in condition, the adult labeled an object which was…

Poor sleep is a common feature in autism even though patients themselves do not necessarily complain. The impact of poor sleep on daytime cognitive functioning in autism is not well-known and we therefore investigated whether sleep in autism correlates with daytime cognitive performance. A battery of non-verbal tasks was administered, in the…

With the goal to determine the cognitive architecture that underlies flexible changes of control settings, we assessed within-trial and across-trial dynamics of attentional selection by tracking of eye movements in the context of a cued task-switching paradigm. Within-trial dynamics revealed a switch-induced, discrete delay in onset of…

Humans perceive a wide range of temporal patterns, including those rhythms that occur in music, speech, and movement; however, there are constraints on the rhythmic patterns that we can represent. Past research has shown that sequences in which sounds occur regularly at non-metrical locations in a repeating beat period (non-integer ratio…

The review by Lillard et al. (2013) highlighted the need for additional research to better clarify the nature of the relationship between pretend play and development. However, the authors did not provide a proposal for how to structure the direction of this future work. Here, we provide a possible framework for generating additional research.…

Studies show that as we enter older adulthood (greater than 64 years), our ability to mentally represent action in the form of using motor imagery declines. Using a chronometry paradigm to compare the movement duration of imagined and executed movements, we tested young-, middle-aged, and older adults on their ability to perform sequential finger…