Two experiments used a magnitude estimation paradigm to test whether perception of disfluency is a function of whether the speaker and the listener stutter or do not stutter. Utterances produced by people who stutter were judged as "less fluent," and, critically, this held for apparently fluent utterances as well as for utterances…

Learning tasks are typically thought to be either hippocampal-dependent (impaired by hippocampal lesions) or hippocampal-independent (indifferent to hippocampal lesions). Here, we show that conditioned taste aversion (CTA) learning fits into neither of these categories. Rats were trained to avoid two taste stimuli, one novel and one familiar.…

This study evaluated variables that determined the safety of 15 cane users who were using the touch technique. The results showed that none of the walkers used a touch technique as described and recommended in the literature, that the detection of obstacles was related mainly to the height of the cane tip during the sweep, and that the early…

We introduce computer-based methodologies for investigating object identification in 3- to 5-year-old children. In two experiments, preschool children and adults indicated when they could identify degraded pictures of common objects as those pictures either gradually improved or degraded in clarity. Clarity transformations were implemented in four…

Individuals with autism show relatively strong performance on tasks that require them to identify the constituent parts of a visual stimulus. This is assumed to be the result of a bias towards processing the local elements in a display that follows from a weakened ability to integrate information at the global level. The results of the current…

The Early Alert Alzheimer's Home Screening Test (AHST) is a variant of the Smell Identification Test (SIT) and the Cross-Cultural Smell Identification Test (CC-SIT), and recently became available for purchase by the general public. The validity and the practical utility of routine screening for individuals with asymptomatic cognitive impairment…

Two tasks of word identification were proposed to children in their last year of upper preschool classes. The results show that identification is not based on an holistic processing but on an analytic one: some letters are enough, especially the first ones. Moreover, their order does not matter. During this period where reading is visuo-semantic…

Phonotactic probability, a measure of the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence, appears to facilitate noun learning (H. L. Storkel, 2001). Nouns and verbs, however, tend to differ in rate of acquisition, indicating that word-learning mechanisms may differ across grammatical class. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect…

Most studies have been unable to identify reliable acoustic cues for the recognition of the English nonsibilant fricatives /f, v, [theta], [eth]/. The present study was designed to test the extent to which the perception of these fricatives by normal-hearing adults is based on other sources of information, namely, linguistic context and visual…

This paper describes research investigating the perception of intrusive music, that is, music heard when choice, volume, and occurrence are not under the control of the participant. Participants were directed to record diary accounts of episodes in which music was played in instances when they were not in control of the decision to play the music…

Twelve-month-old infants' ability to perceive gaze direction in static video images was investigated. The images showed a woman who performed attention-directing actions by looking or pointing toward 1 of 4 objects positioned in front of her (2 on each side). When the model just pointed at the objects, she looked straight ahead, and when she just…

Scaffolding has proven an especially interesting and promising area for postsecondary teaching and learning practices. Particular interest has emerged in scaffolding student learning in technology-enhanced environments--especially those designed to promote critical thinking. This study examined participant perceptions and use of scaffolding in an…

To be understood, visually, often depends on how skilled one is in catching form and translating it into a two-dimensional surface. This is a challenge we are confronted with early in life. Children's learning strategies in drawing are not always understood or encouraged. This article presents a socio-cultural analysis from Norway of a pedagogical…

This article explores the way young people's responses to an image evolve when they engage with it repeatedly. An analysis of the sequential encounters of six adolescents with a Renaissance painting reveals that, as they gained experience with the picture, the youngsters probed for increasingly deeper layers of meaning in the work. Specifically,…

The term "visual representation" is used purposefully to include a wide range of visual meaning-making devices and symbols. Although visual representations are considered important as meaning-making devices across theoretical constructs, little has been done to examine their role in the assessment and evaluation of learning in all areas of the…