Much recent evidence shows that preschoolers are sensitive to the accuracy of an informant. Faced with two informants, one of whom names familiar objects accurately and the other inaccurately, preschoolers subsequently prefer to learn the names and functions of unfamiliar objects from the more accurate informant. This study examined the inference…

Children's well-documented tendency to behave as if they know more than they do about uncertain events is reduced under two conditions: when the outcome of a chance event has yet to be determined and when one unknown outcome has occurred but is difficult to imagine. In Experiment 1, in line with published findings, 5- and 6-year-olds (N=61)…

Two experiments tested a hypothesis that reducing demands on executive control in a Dimensional Change Card Sort task will lead to improved performance in 3-year-olds. In Experiment 1, the shape dimension was represented by two dissimilar values ("stars" and "flowers"), and the color dimension was represented by two similar values ("red" and…

Pictures of handled objects such as a beer mug or frying pan are shown to prime speeded reach and grasp actions that are compatible with the object. To determine whether the evocation of motor affordances implied by this result is driven merely by the physical orientation of the object's handle as opposed to higher-level properties of the object,…

Prior knowledge shapes our experiences, but which prior knowledge shapes which experiences? This question is addressed in the domain of music perception. Three experiments were used to determine whether listeners activate specific musical memories during music listening. Each experiment provided listeners with one of two musical contexts that was…

Delay to delivery of a reinforcer can decrease responding for that reinforcer and increase responding for smaller reinforcers that are available concurrently and delivered without delay; acute administration of drugs can alter responding for large, delayed reinforcers, although the impact of chronic treatment on delay discounting is not well…

A greater understanding of implicit cognition can provide important information regarding the etiology and maintenance of psychological disorders. The current study sought to determine the utility of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a measure of implicit aversive bias toward spiders in two groups of known variation, high fear…

Printed words that have a transposed-letter (TL) neighbor (e.g., angel has the TL neighbor angle) have been shown to be more difficult to process, in a range of paradigms, than words that do not have a TL neighbor. However, eye movement evidence suggests that this processing difficulty may occur on only a subset of trials. To investigate this…

Cognitive scientists describe creativity as fluid thought. Drawing from findings on gesture and embodied cognition, we hypothesized that the physical experience of fluidity, relative to nonfluidity, would lead to more fluid, creative thought. Across 3 experiments, fluid arm movement led to enhanced creativity in 3 domains: creative generation,…

The exhibition of actions that are causally unnecessary to the outcomes with which they are associated is a core feature of human cultural behavior. To enter into the world(s) of their cultural in-group, children must learn to assimilate such unnecessary actions into their own behavioral repertoire. Past research has established the habitual…

The purpose of this study was to assess whether understanding relational terminology (i.e., "more, less," and "fewer") mediates the effects of intervention on compare word problems. Second-grade classrooms (N = 31) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: researcher-designed word-problem intervention, researcher-designed calculation…

In four experiments, task-switching processes were investigated with variants of the alternating runs paradigm and the explicit cueing paradigm. The classical diffusion model for binary decisions (Ratcliff, 1978) was used to dissociate different components of task-switching costs. Findings can be reconciled with the view that task-switching…

Mothers' actions are more enthusiastic, simple, and repetitive when demonstrating novel object properties to their infants than to adults, a behavioral modification called "infant-directed action" by Brand and colleagues (2002). The current study tested whether fathers also tailor their behavior when interacting with infants and whether this…

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.…

Recent studies reported that training of working memory may improve performance in the trained function and beyond. Other executive functions, however, have been rarely or not yet systematically examined. The aim of this study was to test the effectiveness of inhibitory control (IC) training to produce true training-related function improvements…