This article sketches a framework of ideas developed in the context of decades of physics teacher-education that was entitled the "perceptional approach". Individual learning and the scientific enterprise are interpreted as different manifestations of the same process aimed at understanding the natural and social worlds. The process is understood…

In the current study, we explored the influence of synesthesia on memory for word lists. We tested 10 grapheme-color synesthetes who reported an experience of color when reading letters or words. We replicated a previous finding that memory is compromised when synesthetic color is incongruent with perceptual color. Beyond this, we found that,…

Collaboration among the four universities in the University of Houston System became popular in late 1999 and early 2000. Efforts to work collaboratively to deliver course work to our public were relatively successful according to our evaluations. This study sought to determine the extent to which those efforts were perceived as being valuable by…

Inversion disproportionately impairs recognition of face stimuli compared to nonface stimuli arguably due to the holistic manner in which faces are processed. A qualification is put forward in which the first point fixated on is different for upright and inverted faces and this carries some of the face-inversion effect. Three experiments explored…

The researchers surveyed English and Speech & Theater faculty members at Queensborough Community College on their perceptions of and attitudes toward plagiarism. The researchers used the Queensborough Community College Academic Integrity Policy as the basis for their analysis. Based on the responses received, it was determined that 50% of the…

The present study was intended to compare age effects on visual and spatial working memory by using two versions of the same task that differed only in presentation mode. The working memory task contained both a simultaneous and a sequential presentation mode condition, reflecting, respectively, visual and spatial working memory processes. Young…

The goal of this study is to pilot test whether the instructional approach known as Processing Instruction could be adapted to the teaching of second language (L2) pronunciation. The target sounds selected were the Spanish tap and trill. Three groups of high school students of Spanish as a foreign language participated in the study. One group…

Practicing a visual task commonly results in improved performance. Often the improvement does not transfer well to a new retinal location, suggesting that it is mediated by changes occurring in early visual cortex, and indeed neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies both demonstrate that perceptual learning is associated with altered activity…

One intriguing question in language research concerns the extent to which orthographic information impacts on spoken word processing. Previous research has faced a number of methodological difficulties and has not reached a definitive conclusion. Our research addresses these difficulties by capitalizing on recent developments in the area of word…

Several different explanations have been proposed to account for the search asymmetry (SA) for angry schematic faces (i.e., the fact that an angry face target among friendly faces can be found faster than vice versa). The present study critically tested the perceptual grouping account, (a) that the SA is not due to emotional factors, but to…

Speech processing requires sensitivity to long-term regularities of the native language yet demands listeners to flexibly adapt to perturbations that arise from talker idiosyncrasies such as nonnative accent. The present experiments investigate whether listeners exhibit "dimension-based statistical learning" of correlations between acoustic…

Language experience "narrows" speech perception by the end of infants' first year, reducing discrimination of non-native phoneme contrasts while improving native-contrast discrimination. Previous research showed that declines in non-native discrimination were reversed by second-language experience provided at 9-10 months, but it is not known…

Through study of clinical cases with brain lesions as well as neuroimaging studies of cognitive processing of words and pictures, it has been established that material-specific hemispheric specialization exists. It remains however unclear whether such specialization holds true for all processes involved in complex tasks, such as recognition…

This study aimed to evaluate spatial function in subjects with Williams syndrome (WS) by using a large-scale task with multiple rewards and comparing the spatial abilities of WS subjects with those of mental age-matched control children. In the present spatial task, WS participants had to explore an open space to search nine rewards placed in…

This study examined the active joint-position sense in children with Spastic Hemiparetic Cerebral Palsy (SHCP) and the effect of static visual feedback and static mirror visual feedback, of the non-moving limb, on the joint-position sense. Participants were asked to match the position of one upper limb with that of the contralateral limb. The task…