Two visual-world experiments evaluated the time course and use of orthographic information in spoken-word recognition using printed words as referents. Participants saw 4 words on a computer screen and listened to spoken sentences instructing them to click on one of the words (e.g., "Click on the word bead"). The printed words appeared…

Adults can be adapted to a particular facial distortion in which both eyes are shifted symmetrically (Robbins, R., McKone, E., & Edwards, M. (2007). "Aftereffects for face attributes with different natural variability: Adapter position effects and neural models." "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33," 570-592),…

Do the emotional valence and arousal of events distort children's memories? Do valence and arousal modulate counterintuitive age increases in false memory? We investigated those questions in children, adolescents, and adults using the Cornell/Cortland Emotion Lists, a word list pool that induces false memories and in which valence and arousal can…

Previous studies have shown that observing a human model's actions, but not a robot's actions, could induce young children's perseverative behaviors and suggested that children's sociocognitive abilities can lead to perseverative errors ("social transmission of disinhibition"). This study investigated how the social transmission of disinhibition…

Humans discount larger delayed rewards less steeply than smaller rewards, whereas no such magnitude effect has been observed in rats (and pigeons). It remains possible that rats' discounting is sensitive to differences in the quality of the delayed reinforcer even though it is not sensitive to amount. To evaluate this possibility, Experiment 1…

The goal of this series of experiments was to develop an operant choice procedure to examine rapidly the punishing effects of intravenous drugs in rats. First, the cardiovascular effects of experimenter-administered intravenous histamine, a known aversive drug, were assessed to determine a biologically active dose range. Next, rats responded on…

In order to examine metacognitive accuracy (i.e., the relationship between metacognitive judgment and memory performance), researchers often rely on by-participant analysis, where metacognitive accuracy (e.g., resolution, as measured by the gamma coefficient or signal detection measures) is computed for each participant and the computed values are…

In a recent study, Gevers and colleagues (2010, "Journal of Experimental Psychology: General," Vol. 139, pp. 180-190) showed that the SNARC (spatial numerical association of response codes) effect in adults results not only from spatial coding of magnitude (e.g., mental number line hypothesis) but also from verbal coding. Because children are…

Attention operates to select both spatial locations and perceptual objects. However, the specific mechanism by which attention is oriented to objects is not well understood. We examined the means by which object structure constrains the distribution of spatial attention (i.e., a "grouped array"). Using a modified version of the Egly et…

One might assume that familiarity with a scene or previous encounters with objects embedded in a scene would benefit subsequent search for those items. However, in a series of experiments we show that this is not the case: When participants were asked to subsequently search for multiple objects in the same scene, search performance remained…

We investigated the processing of threat-related, positive, and neutral words in parafoveal and in foveal vision as a function of individual differences in trait anxiety. In a lexical-decision task, word primes were presented for 150 ms either parafoveally (2.2[degrees] away from fixation; Experiment 1) or foveally (at fixation; Experiment 3)…

Expression in musical performance is largely communicated by the "manner" in which a piece is played; interpretive aspects that supplement the written score. In piano performance, timing and amplitude are the principal parameters the performer can vary. We examined the way in which such variation serves to communicate emotion by…

Inhibition of return (IOR) occurs when a target is preceded by an irrelevant stimulus (cue) at the same location: Target detection is slowed, relative to uncued locations. In the present study, we used relatively complex displays to examine the effect of repetition of nonspatial attributes. For both color and shape, attribute repetition produced a…

Imitative compatibility, or automatic imitation, has been used as a measure of imitative performance and as a behavioral index of the functioning of the human mirror system (e.g., Brass, Bekkering, Wohlschlager, & Prinz, 2000; Heyes, Bird, Johnson, & Haggard, 2005; Kilner, Paulignan, & Blakemore, 2003). However, the use of imitative…

This study investigates the impact of working memory (WM) load on response conflicts arising from spatial (non) correspondence between irrelevant stimulus location and response location (Simon effect). The dominant view attributes the Simon effect to automatic processes of location-based response priming. The automaticity view predicts…