Reality-monitoring errors occur when internally generated thoughts are remembered as external occurrences. We hypothesized that sleep-dependent memory consolidation could reduce them by strengthening connections between items and their contexts during an afternoon nap. Participants viewed words and imagined their referents. Pictures of the…

On forced-choice tests of recognition memory, performance is best when targets are paired with novel foils (A-X), followed by corresponding lures (A-A'), and then noncorresponding lures (A-B'). The current study tested the prediction that encoding variability accounts for reduced performance on A-B' trials. Young adults (n = 43) completed the…

Sensorimotor abnormalities are common in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, the processes underlying these deficits remain unclear. This study examined force production with and without visual feedback to determine if individuals with ASD can utilize internal representations to guide sustained force. Individuals with ASD…

Studies on teaching tacts to individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have primarily focused on visual stimuli, despite published clinical recommendations to teach tacts of stimuli in other sensory domains as well. In the current study, two children with ASD were taught to tact auditory stimuli under two stimulus-presentation arrangements:…

Purpose: This study assessed the extent to which 6- to 8.5-month-old infants and 18- to 30-year-old adults detect and discriminate auditory syllables in noise better in the presence of visual speech than in auditory-only conditions. In addition, we examined whether visual cues to the onset and offset of the auditory signal account for this…

Perceptual learning accounts of orthographic coding predict that transposed-letter (TL) priming effects should be smaller when the prime and target stimuli are not presented in their canonical (left-to-right horizontal in English) orientation (Dehaene, Cohen, Sigman, & Vinckier, 2005; Grainger & Holcomb, 2009). In contrast, abstract letter…

Studies addressing the recognition of emotions in blind or deaf participants have been carried out only with children and adolescents. Due to these age limits, such studies do not clarify the long-term effects of vision and hearing disabilities on emotion recognition in adults. We assessed the ability to recognize basic emotions in 15 deaf adults…

Autistic individuals have shown superior performance in simple, albeit difficult, visual search tasks. We compared eye movements and behavioral markers across two visual search tasks based on real-world scenes in young adults. Context-aided search increased speed and accuracy for all groups. Autistic adults (n = 29) were on average consistently…

This study investigates how task-irrelevant auditory information is processed in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Eighteen children with ASD and 19 age- and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children were presented with semantically-congruent and incongruent picture-sound pairs, and in separate tasks were instructed to attend to…

A substantial degree of empirical evidence has illustrated the correlation between spatial skills and performance in engineering education. This evidence has been foundational in the construction of educational interventions which have resulted in both increased levels of spatial ability and increased educational performance and retention.…

This article outlines Primary Science for All resources and ideas designed to raise engagement in science for pupils with special educational needs. The aims of the Primary Science for All project were to: (1) make science more accessible to primary school pupils with invisible special needs and to enhance their progress in science; and (2)…

Children with autism spectrum disorders have been reported to be less influenced by a speaker's face during speech perception than those with typically development. To more closely examine these reported differences, a novel visual phonemic restoration paradigm was used to assess neural signatures (event-related potentials [ERPs]) of audiovisual…

Response control or inhibition is one of the cornerstones of modern cognitive psychology, featuring prominently in theories of executive functioning and impulsive behavior. However, repeated failures to observe correlations between commonly applied tasks have led some theorists to question whether common response conflict processes even exist. A…

In four experiments, we investigated the impact of letter case (lower case vs. UPPER CASE) on the processing of sequences of written words. Experiment 1 used the rapid parallel visual presentation (RPVP) paradigm with postcued identification of one word in a five-word sequence. The sequence could be grammatically correct (e.g., "the boy likes…

Haptics in the sense of active touch, as well as internally felt bodily sensations, add an important dimension to learning sessions at historical sites. Drawing on observations of primary school pupils visiting historical sites in Sweden, and interviews with pupils, teachers, and site educators following the visits, this study investigates in…