Behavioral flexibility is a cognitive process depending on prefrontal areas allowing adaptive responses to environmental changes. Serotonin transporter knockout (5-HTT[superscript -/-]) rodents show improved reversal learning in addition to orbitofrontal cortex changes. Another form of behavioral flexibility, extradimensional strategy set-shifting…

Two experiments tested the effect of temporal interference on order memory for fixed and random sequences in young adults and nondemented older adults. The results demonstrate that temporal order memory for fixed and random sequences is impaired in nondemented older adults, particularly when temporal interference is high. However, temporal order…

Numerous studies have indicated that maintaining a fear memory after retrieval requires de novo protein synthesis. However, no study to date has examined how the temporal dynamics of repeated retrieval events affect this protein synthesis requirement. The present study varied the timing of a second retrieval of an established auditory fear memory…

The labial-coronal effect has originally been described as a bias to initiate a word with a labial consonant-vowel-coronal consonant (LC) sequence. This bias has been explained with constraints on the human speech production system, and its perceptual correlates have motivated the suggestion of a perception-production link. However, previous…

This paper presents a laboratory exercise that introduces students to the use of video analysis software and the Lenz's law demonstration. Digital techniques have proved to be very useful for the understanding of physical concepts. In particular, the availability of affordable digital video offers students the opportunity to actively engage in…

Studies regarding the whoosh bottle combustion experiment have largely focused on the detonation hazard of the demonstration, particularly with regards to fuel and container choice. Previous work has suggested that the fuel should be 2-propanol owing to its relatively cool flame characteristics. The current study has found that the combustion of…

The refereeing system in amateur football is not without weakness. Some referees could be deliberately led to destabilize a match in order to demonstrate their skills in regulating a situation of potential conflict. This has posed an ethical problem to soccer institutions. Our study proposes to focus on this phenomenon by questioning seventy four…

A concerted effort has been made to increase the opportunities for undergraduate students to address scientific problems employing the processes used by practicing chemists. As part of this effort, an infrared (IR) spectroscopy and molecular modeling experiment was developed for the first-year general chemistry laboratory course. In the…

Polymer science represents an important area in industrial and research laboratories for chemists and material scientists. However, experiments involving polymers are uncommon in chemistry and material science curricula; therefore, an experiment involving polymers has been developed. This experiment has been used to teach fabrication of polymer…

Recent evidence suggests that people are highly efficient at detecting conflicting outputs produced by competing intuitive and analytic reasoning processes. Specifically, De Neys and Glumicic (2008) demonstrated that participants reason longer about problems that are characterized by conflict (as opposed to agreement) between stereotypical…

Language for number is an important case study of the relationship between language and cognition because the mechanisms of non-verbal numerical cognition are well-understood. When the Piraha (an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe who have no exact number words) are tested in non-verbal numerical tasks, they are able to perform one-to-one matching…

Previous research has demonstrated that visual properties of objects can affect shape-based categorization in a novel-name extension task; however, we still do not know how a relationship between visual properties of objects affects judgments in a novel-name extension task. We examined effects of increased visual similarity among the target and…

Three experiments used multiple methods--open-ended assessments, multiple-choice questionnaires, and interviews--to investigate the hypothesis that the development of students' understanding of the concept of real variable in algebra may be influenced in fundamental ways by their initial concept of number, which seems to be organized around the…

The authors ask whether writing a report on a classroom experiment increases a student's performance in an end-of-course test. To answer this question, the authors analyzed data from a first-year undergraduate course based on classroom experiments and found that writing a report has a large positive benefit. They conclude, therefore, that it is…

In 1930, Einstein argued against the consistency of the time-energy uncertainty relation by discussing a thought experiment involving a measurement of the mass of the box which emitted a photon. Bohr seemingly prevailed over Einstein by arguing that Einstein's own general theory of relativity saves the consistency of quantum mechanics. We revisit…