This article reviews the embodied theoretical basis for the meaningful learning of abstract vocabulary and reviews selected educational programs that are theoretically based and have both success and promise for abstract vocabulary development. Abstract vocabulary is a mainstay of academic vocabulary, but its nature and educational development are…

Agents are important for structuring memory in adulthood. However, it is unclear whether this "social memory bias" stems from a reliance on agents in verbal narratives, or whether it reflects more fundamental preverbal memory processes. By testing 9-month-old infants in a non-verbal eye-tracking paradigm, we were able to effectively…

Current theories of category learning posit separate verbal and nonverbal learning systems. Past research suggests that the verbal system relies on verbal working memory and executive functioning and learns rule-defined categories; the nonverbal system does not rely on verbal working memory and learns non-rule-defined categories (E. M. Waldron…

Analogical reasoning is an important component of intelligent behavior, and a key test of any approach to human language and cognition. Only a limited amount of empirical work has been conducted from a behavior analytic point of view, most of that within Relational Frame Theory (RFT), which views analogy as a matter of deriving relations among…

Analogical reasoning--perceiving similarities in different situations and the transfer of such information--facilitates learning and understanding. However, children with learning disabilities (LD) typically demonstrate deficits in such information processing strategies. In this study, we investigated the analogical problem-solving differences…

Proposes a theory of social cognition to account for the comprehension and verification of social information. The theory views comprehension as a process of constructing situation models of new information on the basis of previously formed models about its referents. The comprehension of both single statements and multiple pieces of information…

This study examined conceptual relationships in semantic memory using an indirect priming technique in high-functioning autistic adolescents and controls. The autistic subjects and controls showed similar semantic priming effects. However, correlations with nonverbal cognitive measures for the autistic subjects suggests that semantic processing in…

Combined activation of dopamine D1- and NMDA-glutamate receptors in the nucleus accumbens has been strongly implicated in instrumental learning, the process in which an individual learns that a specific action has a wanted outcome. To assess dopaminergic activity, we presented rats with two sessions (30 trials each) of a one-lever appetitive…

A hemispheric specialization of function paradigm was used to test cognitive skill and cognitive style in learning disabled and "normal" boys between the ages of 7 and 12. Discussion emphasizes the need for more information on nonverbal processing skills to aid in developing verbal representational systems. (JMB)

Although the Morris water task has been used in hundreds of studies of place learning, there have been no systematic studies of retention of the place memory. We report that retention, as measured by selective search behavior on a probe trial, is excellent when the retention interval is short (5-10 min). However, performance rapidly deteriorates,…

Visual discrimination tasks are increasingly used to explore the neurobiology of vision in rodents, but it remains unclear how the animals solve these tasks: Do they process shapes holistically, or by using low-level features such as luminance and angle acuity? In the present study we found that when discriminating triangles from squares, rats did…

Investigated the ontogenesis of oddity learning. Children and adults were tested on two versions of the oddity task using nonverbal procedures. Results suggested that children use different strategies to solve different versions of the oddity task, and in tasks in which stimuli are presented simultaneously, behavior may be controlled by stimulus…

There is some consensus in the literature regarding the cognitive profile of people with Asperger syndrome (AS). Findings to date suggest that a proportion of people with AS have higher verbal than performance IQ, a non-verbal learning disability (NVLD) and impairments in some aspects of executive function (EF). However, there are few published…

The play behavior of young children is viewed as a behavioral manifestation of nonverbal thinking. Discussed are issues of relevance to the understanding of the development of thought in general and of the symbolic function in particular. A line of development is proposed which leads from early nonverbal thought as manifested in play, either…