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…

A body of research shows that grammatical gender, although an arbitrary category, is viewed as the system with its own meaning. However, the question remains to what extent does grammatical gender influence shaping our notions about objects when both verbal and visual information are available. Two experiments were conducted. The results obtained…

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…

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…

Several theories in audiovisual education hold that learning from a visual illustration is directly related to the realism of the visual aid. In order to test this theory, five treatment groups were established. All groups were pretested, taught the same unit of instruction, and posttested. Four groups saw slide sequences in which were viewed…

Human recognition behavior is influenced by the phenomenon of shape constancy, which occurs when the shape of an object is correctly perceived regardless of the orientation of the object in space. The research reported here tests the validity of the shape-slant invariance hypothesis, a theoretical formulation of the phenomenon of shape constancy.…

In a human fear conditioning paradigm using the skin conductance response (SCR), participants were assigned to two groups. Following identical acquisition, group ABA (n = 16) was extinguished to a generalization stimulus (GS), whereas group AAB (n = 20) was extinguished to the conditioned stimulus (CS). At test, presenting the CS in group ABA…

Illustrates how nonverbal elements, either inherent in the text or incorporated into the reading lesson, can be used to facilitate students' foreign language reading comprehension. Suggestions for using visual information strategies for prediction, overall comprehension, main points comprehension, and intensive comprehension help students to…

This paper examines how visual information strategies may be used to facilitate the development of mental models. Topics covered include: definition of mental models; mental models and visual information; mental modeling concepts; power of modeling, including examples related to physical science, mathematics, writing, and depth of processing;…

Reports on the effectiveness of visual illustrations used in conjunction with oral instructions. Results indicate that the reduction of realistic detail in an illustration does not necessarily reduce its instructional effectiveness and in many cases improves it. There were also significant differences in the effectiveness of different types of…

Outlines a concentrated in-service visual training program which incorporates (1) perceptual effects of visual stimuli, (2) synthetic and natural stimuli, (3) non-verbal stimuli, (4) pictorial communication, (5) visual persuasion, and (6) creative visualization. (Author/CMV)

TgCRND8 mice represent a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease, with onset of cognitive impairment and increasing amyloid-[beta] plaques in their brains at 12 weeks of age. In this study, the spatial memory in 25- to 30-week-old TgCRND8 mice was analyzed in two reference and one working memory Morris water maze (MWM) tests. In reference…

A possible role of the cerebellum in detecting and recognizing event sequences has been proposed. The present study sought to determine whether patients with cerebellar lesions are impaired in the acquisition and discrimination of sequences of sensory stimuli of different modalities. A group of 26 cerebellar patients and 26 controls matched for…

The relative ease of learning with Bliss symbols or words was investigated using four moderately retarded and four severely retarded children (ages 6 to 9 and 14 to 17, respectively) as Ss. It was found that Bliss symbols were the more easily learned and this was most evident among the severely retarded Ss. (Author/PHR)

Two experiments examined the effects of reductions in cortical cholinergic function on performance of a novel task that allowed for the simultaneous assessment of attention to a visual stimulus and memory for that stimulus over a variable delay within the same test session. In the first experiment, infusions of the muscarinic receptor antagonist…