Stimulus overselectivity is widely accepted as a stimulus control abnormality in autism spectrum disorders and subsets of other populations. Previous research has demonstrated a link between both chronological and mental age and overselectivity in typical development. However, the age at which children are developmentally ready to respond to…

Sixty infants divided evenly between 5 and 7 months of age were tested for their knowledge of object continuity versus discontinuity with a predictive tracking task. The stimulus event consisted of a moving ball that was briefly occluded for 20 trials. Both age groups predictively tracked the ball when it disappeared and reappeared via occlusion,…

This research examines the early emergence of source-monitoring abilities. Previous research has consistently demonstrated that children as young as 3 to 4 years of age do well on simple versions of action-based source-monitoring tasks. Research on even younger children, however, remains lacking. In this study we examined whether 2 1/2-year-olds…

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…

Motor affordances have been shown to play a role in visual object identification and categorization. The present study explored whether working memory is likewise supported by motor affordances. Use of motor affordances should be disrupted by motor interference, and this effect should be larger for objects that have motor affordances than for…

One approach to understanding working memory (WM) holds that individual differences in WM capacity arise from the amount of information a person can store in WM over short periods of time. This view is especially prevalent in WM research conducted with the visual arrays task. Within this tradition, many researchers have concluded that the average…

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…

Damage to the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) can lead to Optic Ataxia (OA), in which patients misreach to peripheral targets. Recent research suggested that the PPC might be involved not only in simple reaching tasks toward peripheral targets, but also in changing the hand movement trajectory in real time if the target moves. The present study…

In this paper, we focus specifically on Vygotsky's theory of concept formation to gain initial insights into seemingly garbled and incoherent connections we observed in learners' responses to a geometry task. While acknowledging research that is supportive of the van Hiele model as being useful when analysing concept formation in geometry, in this…

This study examined behavioral changes in 15-day learning of word-picture (WP) and word-sound (WS) associations, using meaningless stimuli. Subjects performed a learning task and two recognition tasks under the WP and WS conditions every day for 15 days. Two main findings emerged from this study. First, behavioral data of recognition accuracy and…

The purpose of this body of work was to gain a clearer understanding of the potential cognitive factors that may contribute to Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This study attempted to simulate a performance profile of SLI in typically developing children within a grammaticality judgment task, featuring structures historically difficult (third…

Studies of social cognitive reasoning have demonstrated instances of children engaging in eye gaze patterns toward correct answers even when pointing or verbal responses are directed toward incorrect answers. Findings such as these have spawned seminal theories, yet no consensus has been reached regarding the characteristics of the knowledge…

In examining how English as a second language (ESL) learners process English formulaic expressions in a nonnative English context, this study aims to investigate the strategies that learners use and how first language (L1) culture and conceptual knowledge could influence the use of the strategies. This study is guided by the research question of…

Teaching and learning a foreign language at a distance implies many challenges, namely regarding oral skills. At Universidade Aberta (the Portuguese Open University), and taking into account its virtual pedagogical model (Pereira, 2007) and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Alves, 2001), we suggest curricular paths which…

The goal of this short-term longitudinal study was to identify how stress impacts later literacy achievement via the mediators of grit and emotional engagement. Study design included three time-points with students in 3rd through 5th grades who were low-income, dual language learners in the US (N = 142; 54% female; 75% Latina/o; M = 9.47 years…