The research paradigm invented by Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon in the late 1950s dominated the study of problem solving for more than three decades. But in the early 1990s, problem solving ceased to drive research on complex cognition. As part of this decline, Newell and Simon's most innovative research practices--especially their method for…

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to identify neural regions engaged during the encoding of contextual features belonging to different modalities. Subjects studied objects that were presented to the left or right of fixation. Each object was paired with its name, spoken in either a male or a female voice. The test…

This study looked at the potential relationship that may exist between students' intelligence strengths, in particular their spatial and kinesthetic strengths, and their combined cognitive and metacognitive levels of interaction with a CD-ROM storybook. The multiple intelligence strengths of a sample of students, measured via the MIDAS/My…

There is converging evidence that the feeling of conscious recollection is usually accompanied by the bound retrieval of context features of the encoding episode (e.g., Meiser, Sattler, & Weiber, 2008). Recently, however, important limiting conditions have been identified for the binding between context features in memory. For example, focusing on…

Performance in the stop-signal paradigm involves a balance between going and stopping, and one way that this balance is struck is through shifting priority away from the go task, slowing responses after a stop signal, and improving the probability of inhibition. In 6 experiments, the authors tested whether there is a corresponding shift in…

The primary aim of the present pilot study was to examine cognitive biases in individuals with mild to borderline ID and alcohol use-related problems. Participants (N = 57) performed the approach avoidance task, picture rating task and visual dot probe task, which was combined with eye-tracking methodology. They were admitted to a forensic setting…

This article provides the first comprehensive conceptual account for the imagistic mental machinery that allows us to travel through time--for the time machine in our mind. It is argued that language reveals this imagistic machine and how we use it. Findings from a range of cognitive fields are theoretically unified and a recent proposal about…

It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship…

For adults, ownership is nonobvious: (a) determining ownership depends more on an object's history than on perceptual cues, and (b) ownership confers special value on an object ("endowment effect"). This study examined these concepts in preschoolers (2.0-4.4) and adults (n = 112). Participants saw toy sets in which 1 toy was designated as the…

One of the attributes necessary for Watson to be considered human is that it must be conscious. From Rachlin's (2012) point of view, that of teleological behaviorism, consciousness refers to the organization of behavioral complexity in which overt behavior is distributed widely over time. Consciousness is something that humans do, or achieve, in…

Creative achievements are the basis for progress in our world. Although creative achievement is influenced by many variables, the basis for creativity is held to lie in the generation of high-quality, original, and elegant solutions to complex, novel, ill-defined problems. In the present effort, we examine the cognitive capacities that make…

The way technology influences a person's cognition is seldom recognized, but is of increasing interest among brain researchers. Outdoor educators tend to pay attention to the way different activities offer different perceptions of an environment. When natural spaces can no longer be accessed, they adapt and simulate natural activities in available…

Recent findings suggest that the immediate free recall (IFR) of short lists is similar to immediate serial recall (ISR). These findings were obtained using a methodology in which participants did not know the list length in advance of each list, and this uncertainty may have encouraged participants to adopt atypical recall strategies. Therefore,…

As a philosophy professor, one of my central goals is to teach students to think critically. However, one difficulty with determining whether critical thinking can be taught, or even measured, is that there is widespread disagreement over what critical thinking actually is. Here, I reflect on several conceptions of critical thinking, subjecting…

To avoid sensory overload, people are able to selectively attend to a particular color or direction of motion while ignoring irrelevant stimuli that differ from the desired one. We show here for the first time that it is also possible to selectively attend to a specific line orientation--but with an important caveat: orientations that are…