Some researchers on binary choice inference have argued that people make inferences based on simple heuristics, such as recognition, fluency, or familiarity. Others have argued that people make inferences based on available knowledge. To examine the boundary between heuristic and knowledge usage, we examine binary choice inference processes in…

Prior work shows that children selectively learn from credible speakers. Yet little is known how they treat information from non-credible speakers. This research examined to what extent and under what conditions children may or may not learn from problematic sources. In three studies, we found that children displayed trust toward previously…

Although many researchers theorize that primitive numerosity processing abilities may lay the foundation for whole number concepts, other classes of numbers, like fractions, are sometimes assumed to be inaccessible to primitive architectures. This research presents evidence that the automatic processing of nonsymbolic magnitudes affects processing…

To investigate the cognitive processes underlying creative inspiration, we tested the extent to which viewing or copying prior examples impacted creative output in art. In Experiment 1, undergraduates made drawings under three conditions: (a) copying an artist's drawing, then producing an original drawing; (b) producing an original drawing without…

In Chinese orthography, the most common character structure consists of a semantic radical on the left and a phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); the minority, opposite arrangement also exists (PS characters). Recent studies showed that SP character processing is more left hemisphere (LH) lateralized than PS character processing.…

"Cross-situational statistical learning" of words involves tracking co-occurrences of auditory words and objects across time to infer word-referent mappings. Previous research has demonstrated that learners can infer referents across sets of very phonologically distinct words (e.g., WUG, DAX), but it remains unknown whether learners can…

We report on five experiments investigating response choices and response times to simple science questions that evoke student "misconceptions," and we construct a simple model to explain the patterns of response choices. Physics students were asked to compare a physical quantity represented by the slope, such as speed, on simple physics…

Being able to estimate quantity is important in everyday life and for success in the STEM disciplines. However, people have difficulty reasoning about magnitudes outside of human perception (e.g., nanoseconds, geologic time). This study examines patterns of estimation errors across temporal and spatial magnitudes at large scales. We evaluated the…

When a toddler knows a word, what does she actually know? Many categories have multiple relevant properties; for example, shape "and" color are relevant to membership in the category "banana." How do toddlers prioritize these properties when recognizing familiar words, and are there systematic differences among children? In…

How does the process of information transmission affect the cultural or linguistic products that emerge? This question is often studied experimentally and computationally via iterated learning, a procedure in which participants learn from previous participants in a chain. Iterated learning is a powerful tool because, when all participants share…

Research on language processing has shown that the disruption of conceptual integration gives rise to specific patterns of event-related brain potentials (ERPs)--N400 and P600 effects. Here, we report similar ERP effects when adults performed cross-domain conceptual integration of analogous semantic and mathematical relations. In a problem-solving…

People often make use of a spatial "mental time line" to represent events in time. We investigated whether the eyes follow such a mental time line during online language comprehension of sentences that refer to the past, present, and future. Participants' eye movements were measured on a blank screen while they listened to these…

It is known that, on average, people adapt their choice of memory strategy to the subjective utility of interaction. What is not known is whether an individual's choices are "boundedly optimal." Two experiments are reported that test the hypothesis that an individual's decisions about the distribution of remembering between internal and…

We compared the ability of three different contextual models of lexical semantic memory (BEAGLE, Latent Semantic Analysis, and the Topic model) and of a simple associative model (POC) to predict the properties of semantic networks derived from word association norms. None of the semantic models were able to accurately predict all of the network…

This study investigates the acquisition of integrated object manipulation and categorization abilities through a series of experiments in which human adults and artificial agents were asked to learn to manipulate two-dimensional objects that varied in shape, color, weight, and color intensity. The analysis of the obtained results and the…