This study investigates the widely accepted notion that spending more time looking at works of art results in better art appreciations. To this end, we examined the verbal responses of 34 non-expert viewers to works of public contemporary art. We structured and conducted the study in such a way as to compare, for each informant, examples of free,…

Selectively retrieving a target memory among related memories requires some degree of inhibitory control over interfering and competing memories, a process assumed to be supported by inhibitory mechanisms. Evidence from behavioral studies suggests that such inhibitory control can lead to subsequent forgetting of the interfering information, a…

Memory impairments are common after stroke, and the anatomical basis for impairments may be quite variable. To determine the range of stroke-related memory impairment, we identified all case reports and group studies through the Medline database and the Science Citation Index. There is no hypothesis about memory that is unique to stroke, but there…

The ability to mitigate interference is of central importance to cognition. Previous research has provided conflicting accounts about whether operations that resolve interference are singular in character or form a family of functions. Here, the authors examined the relationship between interference-resolution processes acting on working memory…

Models of recognition memory assume that memory decisions are based partially on the subjective strength of the test item. Models agree that the subjective strength of targets increases with additional time for encoding however the origin of the subjective strength of foils remains disputed. Under the fixed strength assumption the distribution of…

Three experiments examined the time course of layout priming with photographic scenes varying in complexity (number of objects). Primes were presented for varying durations (800-50 ms) before a target scene with 2 spatial probes; observers indicated whether the left or right probe was closer to viewpoint. Reaction time was the main measure. Scene…

It is well established that cAMP signaling within neurons plays a major role in the formation of long-term memories--signaling thought to proceed through protein kinase A (PKA). However, here we show that exchange protein activated by cAMP (Epac) is able to enhance the formation of long-term memory in the hippocampus and appears to do so…

Previous repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and neuroimaging studies showed that Broca's area is involved in the interaction between gestures and words. However, in these studies the nature of this interaction was not fully investigated; consequently, we addressed this issue in three behavioral experiments. When compared to the…

Piaget proposed that understanding permanency, understanding occlusion events, and forming mental representations were synonymous; however, accumulating evidence indicates that those concepts are "not" unified in development. Infants reach for endarkened objects at younger ages than for occluded objects, and infants' looking patterns suggest that…

Two experiments examined whether preschoolers' difficulties on tasks that required relating pretending and knowledge (e.g., Lillard, A. S. (1993a). "Young children's conceptualization of pretense: Action or mental representational state?" "Child Development, 64," 372-386) were due to children's inability to appreciate the causal mechanism behind…

Much of our human mental life looks to involve a seamless unfolding of perception, action and experience: a golden braid in which each element twines intimately with the rest. We see the very world we act in and we act in the world we see. But more than this, visual experience presents us with the world in a way apt for the control and fine…

This study investigated whether and how deficits in executive functioning and distortions in appraisal processing are related to subtypes of aggressive behavior. The sample included 83 boys assessed using multi-informant reports and performance measures. Deficits in two executive functions, response inhibition and planning ability were related…

In interdisciplinary or intercultural groups, it is highly important that the members of the group are able to apply and share knowledge across the standard boundaries that exist around disciplines and practices. Often, a lot of effort is required to avoid pitfalls such as misunderstandings, judgemental discussions or just the inability to…

Besides traditional supervised classification learning, people can learn categories by inferring the missing features of category members. It has been proposed that feature inference learning promotes learning a category's internal structure (e.g., its typical features and interfeature correlations) whereas classification promotes the learning of…

Two experiments explored how individuals with and without autism plan and reprogram movements. Participants were given partial or complete information regarding the location of the upcoming manual movement. In Experiment 1, direct information specified the hand or direction of the upcoming movement. These results replicated previous reports that…