Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate hand function in children with Erb upper brachial plexus palsy. Method: Hand function was evaluated in 25 children (eight males; 17 females) with a diagnosed upper (C5/C6) brachial plexus birth injury. Of these children, 22 had undergone primary nerve reconstruction and 13 of the 25 had undergone…

We investigated 4- and 5-year-old children's mapping strategies in a spatial task. Children were required to find a picture in an array of three identical cups after observing another picture being hidden in another array of three cups. The arrays were either aligned one behind the other in two rows or placed side by side forming one line.…

This article examines floor management in two classroom sessions: a task-oriented computer lesson and a literature lesson. Recordings made in the computer lesson show the organization of floor when a task is given to students. Temporary or "incipient" side floors (Jones and Thornborrow, 2004) emerge beside the main floor. In the…

The influence of internal (movement focus) and external (outcome focus) attentional-focusing instructions on muscular endurance were investigated using three exercise protocols with experienced exercisers. Twenty-three participants completed a maximal repetition, assisted bench-press test on a Smith's machine. An external focus of attention…

Self-control over factors involving task-related information (e.g., feedback) can enhance motor learning. It is unknown if these benefits extend to manipulations that do not directly affect such information. The purpose of this study was to determine if self-control over the amount of practice would also facilitate learning. Participants learned…

In motor learning, a popular area of research has been to examine the importance of where individuals focus their attention during the acquisition of motor skills. Researchers in this area have proposed that, when teaching a motor skill, the instructions used to direct the learner's attention can affect the immediate and long-term retention of…

The authors examined the effects of a task-irrelevant sound on visual processing. Participants were presented with revolving clocks at or around central fixation and reported the hand position of a target clock at the time an exogenous cue (1 clock turning red) or an endogenous cue (a line pointing toward 1 of the clocks) was presented. A…

Recent research suggests that 9-month-old infants tested in a modified version of the A-not-B search task covertly imitate actions performed by the experimenter. The current study examines whether infants also simulate actions performed by mechanical devices, and whether this varies with whether or not they have been familiarized with the devices…

Pitch, the perceptual correlate of fundamental frequency (F0), plays an important role in speech, music, and animal vocalizations. Changes in F0 over time help define musical melodies and speech prosody, while comparisons of simultaneous F0 are important for musical harmony, and for segregating competing sound sources. This study compared…

We aimed to investigate whether novel stimulus relations would emerge from stimulus correlations when those relations explicitly conflicted with reinforced relations. In a symbolic matching-to-sample task using kanji characters as stimuli, we arranged class-specific incorrect comparison stimuli in each of three classes. After presenting either Ax…

Research has demonstrated that instruction that relies more heavily on example study is more effective for novices' learning than instruction consisting of problem solving. However, "a heavier reliance on example study" has been implemented in different ways. For example, worked examples only (WE), example-problem pairs (WE-PS), or problem-example…

Three experiments with 88 college-aged participants explored how unlabeled experiences--learning episodes in which people encounter objects without information about their category membership--influence beliefs about category structure. Participants performed a simple one-dimensional categorization task in a brief supervised learning phase, then…

Selective processing of task-relevant stimuli is critical for goal-directed behavior. We used electrocorticography to assess the spatio-temporal dynamics of cortical activation during a simple phonological target detection task, in which subjects press a button when a prespecified target syllable sound is heard. Simultaneous surface potential…

The Stroop color-naming task is one of the most widely studied tasks involving the inhibition of a prepotent response, regarded as an executive function. Several studies have examined performance on versions of the Stroop task under conditions of acute sleep deprivation. Though these studies revealed effects on Stroop performance, the results…

The response set effect has been observed in a number of developmental tasks that are proposed to required inhibition. This effect has been interpreted as evidence that the specific responses children plan to make in these tasks become prepotent. Here we investigated whether there is a response set effect in the hand game. In this task, children…