Little is known about the mental representation of large multidigit numbers that are usually beyond our personal experience. The present study explored the processing mechanisms of these numbers in a series of experiments, using the numerical comparison task. Experiment 1 included within and between-scale comparisons of multidigit numbers varying…

Given that both children and adults struggle with fractions in mathematics education, we investigated the processing of nonsymbolic fractions in a continuous form of part-of-the-whole. Continuous features of nonsymbolic numbers (e.g., the size of dots in an array) were found to influence numerosity judgment, but it should be noted that the…

Visual working memory (VWM) is traditionally assumed to be immune to proactive interference (PI). However, in a recent study (Endress & Potter, 2014), performance in a visual memory task was superior when all items were unique and hence interference from previous trials was impossible, compared to a standard condition in which a limited set of…

It was suggested that 2 preconditions promote proactive control: a pending plan to control performance and availability of working memory (WM) storage resources. In 4 experiments, we applied these preconditions to the Stroop task. Using a new approach, we focused on task conflict while manipulating not only the different stimuli proportions, but…

Aim/Purpose: To examine how positive/negative message framing -- based on peripheral cues (regarding popularity, source, visuals, and hyperlink) -- affects perceptions of credibility of scientific information posted on social networking sites (in this case, Facebook), while exploring the mechanisms of viewing the different components. Background:…

It has been suggested that the Stroop task gives rise to 2 conflicts: the information conflict (color vs. word meaning) and the task conflict (name the color vs. read the word). However, behavioral indications for task conflict (reaction time [RT] congruent condition longer than RT neutral condition) appear under very restricted conditions. We…

Visual working memory (VWM) is an online memory buffer that is typically assumed to be immune to source memory confusions. Accordingly, the few studies that have investigated the role of proactive interference (PI) in VWM tasks found only a modest PI effect at best. In contrast, a recent study has found a substantial PI effect in that performance…

The size congruity effect (SiCE) shows that number and physical size interact as magnitudes. That is, response times are faster when number and size are congruent (e.g., 2 4) than when they are incongruent (e.g., 2 4). A shared representational system has been the most influential account for the SiCE. Recently, this account has been challenged by…

The goal of the present study was to examine if and how arousal can modulate response inhibition. Two competing hypotheses can be drawn from previous literature. One holds that alerting cues that elevate arousal should result in an impulsive response and therefore impair response inhibition. The other suggests that alerting enhances processing of…

This research was designed to examine how early-childhood educators pursuing their graduate degrees perceive the concept of happiness, as conveyed in visual representations. The research methodology combines qualitative and quantitative paradigms using the metaphoric collage, a tool used to analyze visual and verbal aspects. The research…

Performance of the Stroop task reflects two conflicts--informational (between the incongruent word and ink color) and task (between relevant color naming and irrelevant word reading). The task conflict is usually not visible, and is only seen when task control is damaged. Using the stop-signal paradigm, a few studies demonstrated longer…

Recent studies have suggested that individuation of other-race faces is more crucial for enhancing recognition performance than exposure that involves categorization of these faces to an identity-irrelevant criterion. These findings were primarily based on laboratory training protocols that dissociated exposure and individuation by using…

Inhibition of return (IOR) is modulated by task set and appears later in discrimination tasks than in detection tasks. Several hypotheses have been suggested to account for this difference. We tested three of these hypotheses in two experiments by examining the influence of cue and target level of processing on the onset of IOR. In the first…

Face perception studies investigated how spatial frequencies (SF) are extracted from retinal display while forming a perceptual representation, or their selective use during task-imposed categorization. Here we focused on the order of encoding low-spatial frequencies (LSF) and high-spatial frequencies (HSF) from perceptual representations into…

The backward-compatibility effect (BCE) is a major index of parallel processing in dual tasks and is related to the dependency of Task 1 performance on Task 2 response codes (Hommel, 1998). The results of four dual-task experiments showed that a BCE occurs when the stimuli of both tasks are included in the same visual object (Experiments 1 and 2)…