We conducted four experiments to examine developmental differences in preferences for using color, size, and location information to disambiguate hiding places. Three- and 4-year-olds and adults described how to find a miniature mouse that was hidden in one of two highly similar small objects in a dollhouse. In Experiment 1, the hiding places…

This study examined 6-month-old infants' abilities to use the visual information provided by simulated self-movement through the world, and movement of an object through the world, for spatial orientation. Infants were habituated to a visual display in which they saw a toy hidden, followed by either rotation of the point of observation through the…

SV sentences with unaccusative verbs like "The leaf fell" involve movement from object to subject position. This line of studies tested whether young children can produce this movement and whether they represent SV sentences with unaccusatives as derived by movement. In Hebrew, unaccusatives appear in both SV and VS orders. This optionality allows…

In a task choice situation, why do some students spontaneously choose challenging tasks while others do not? In the study, 114 undergraduate students were first asked of their perceived competence and interest in solving number puzzles at both individual and situational levels, and then asked to choose one puzzle from four difficulty levels. They…

One of the important phenomena observed in the learning of mathematics is compartmentalization. This phenomenon occurs when a learner has two different, potentially contradictory schemes in his or her cognitive structure; in a typical case, a student deals with the same mathematical concept in an inconsistent or incoherent way, or activates a less…

This study assessed relations among placement instability, inhibitory control, and caregiver-rated child behavior. The sample included 33 adopted children who had experienced placement instability, 42 adopted children who had experienced 1 stable placement, and 27 children never placed in foster care. Five- and 6-year-old children completed the…

Recent data suggest that subthreshold presentation of emotional information is relayed to the amygdala along subcortical pathways. We examined the effect of backward masked neutral and anxious faces on the social decisions of a group of high functioning children with autism ages 7-13 years and matched controls. Participants were asked to select…

An exploratory study was designed to describe Internet search behaviors of deaf adolescents who used Internet search engines to complete fact-based search tasks. The study examined search behaviors of deaf high school students such as query formation, query modification, Web site identification, and Web site selection. Consisting of two fact-based…

Evidence from recent experiments that monitored attention in clipart scenes during spoken comprehension suggests that people preferably rely on non-stereotypical depicted events over stereotypical thematic knowledge for incremental interpretation. "The Coordinated Interplay Account [Knoeferle, P., & Crocker, M. W. (2006). "The coordinated…

Two experiments examined the dynamics of lexical activation in spoken-word recognition. In both, the key materials were pairs of onset-matched picturable nouns varying in frequency. Pictures associated with these words, plus two distractor pictures were displayed. A gating task, in which participants identified the picture associated with…

Two experiments are reported that examine how manipulations of visual attention affect speakers' linguistic choices regarding word order, verb use and syntactic structure when describing simple pictured scenes. Experiment 1 presented participants with scenes designed to elicit the use of a perspective predicate ("The man chases the dog/The dog…

Purpose: When understanding speech in complex listening situations, older adults with hearing loss face the double challenge of cochlear hearing loss and deficits of the aging auditory system. Wide-dynamic range compression (WDRC) is used in hearing aids as remediation for the loss of audibility associated with hearing loss. WDRC processing has…

Language is generally viewed as conveying information through symbols whose form is arbitrarily related to their meaning. This arbitrary relation is often assumed to also characterize the mental representations underlying language comprehension. We explore the idea that visuo-spatial information can be analogically conveyed through acoustic…

Instruction on problem solving in particular domains typically relies on explanations from experts about their strategies. However, research indicates that such self-reports often are incomplete or inaccurate (e.g., Chao & Salvendy, 1994; Cooke & Breedin, 1994). This article evaluates research on experts' cognition, the accuracy of experts'…

We evaluated a video prompting and fading procedure for teaching three adults with developmental disabilities to wash dishes. Video prompting involved showing video clips depicting each step of the task. All three adults reached 90-100% correct when video prompting was implemented. Following acquisition, video prompting was withdrawn, but…