This study examined functions of self-motion and visual cues in updating people's actual headings in multiscale spaces. In an immersive virtual environment, the participants learned objects' locations inside two misaligned rectangular rooms by locomoting within and between the rooms. In each testing trial, the participants locomoted to adopt an…

Four experiments examined the effects of a dangerous context and a systemic epinephrine injection on sensory preconditioning in rats. In each experiment, rats were exposed to presentations of a tone and light in stage 1, light-shock pairings in stage 2, and test presentations of the tone alone and light alone in stage 3. Presentations of the tone…

Dividing attention (DA) between a memory task and a secondary task results in deficits in memory performance across a wide array of memory tasks, but these effects are larger when DA occurs at encoding than at retrieval. Although some research suggests the effects of DA are equal for item and associative memory, thereby suggesting that DA disrupts…

We investigate when infants exhibit knowledge of the familiar size of well-known objects and whether this knowledge is affected by stimulus format, that is, whether the stimuli are presented as real objects or matched pictures. Infants (130 7- and 12-month-olds) saw everyday objects such as sippy cups and pacifiers in their familiar size and novel…

This study examined the effect of increasing visual perceptual load on auditory awareness for social and non-social stimuli in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, n = 63) and typically developing (TD, n = 62) adolescents. Using an inattentional deafness paradigm, a socially meaningful ('Hi') or a non-social (neutral tone) critical…

Previous research has shown that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can categorize visual stimuli without direct training when they can also tact these stimuli using a common name and behave as listeners in relation to this name. However, children usually learn to assign objects specific names prior to learning the category to which they…

Adults with dyslexia may find difficulties in reading the messages on variable message signs (VMS) while driving. These signs are an essential part of the traffic communication systems, aimed at informing road users of special circumstances, such as congestion, traffic diversion, or unexpected events. A driving simulation experiment was conducted…

There are thousands of participants in different programming MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) which means thousands of solutions have to be assessed. As it is very time-consuming to assess that amount of solutions manually, using automated assessment is essential. Since task requirements must be strict for the solutions to be automatically…

Previous studies have shown that compared to hearing individuals, early deaf individuals allocate relatively more attention to the periphery than central visual field. However, it is not clear whether these two groups also differ in their ability to selectively attend to specific peripheral locations. We examined deaf and hearing participants'…

Creativity is linked to broad scope of attention, a state or trait that allocates attentional resources over a wide range of perceptual stimuli. According to the attentional priming hypothesis, a mechanism underlying the creativity--attention link is that broad perceptual attention scope primes broad conceptual attention scope--the activation of a…

Previously reward-associated stimuli persistently capture attention. We attempted to extinguish this attentional bias through a reversal learning procedure where the high-value color changed unexpectedly. Attentional priority shifted during training in favor of the currently high-value color, although a residual bias toward the original high-value…

Background: The perceptual similarity between two objects, specifically similarity in the shape of the referents, is a crucial element for relating words in earlier stages of development. The role of this perceptual similarity has not been systematically explored in children with Down syndrome (DS). Method: The aim was to explore the role of…

The processing of time activates a spatial left-to-right mental timeline, where past events are "located" to the left and future events to the right. If past and future words activate this mental timeline, then the processing of such words should interfere with hand movements that go in the opposite direction. To test this hypothesis, we…

It is still unknown whether visual illusion can bias motor performance in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) individuals. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of visual illusion on performance in children with ASD in a far-aiming skill. In a within-subject design, participants (n = 20, IQ > 70, mean age: 10.15) performed golf putting…

Although putting on a mask over our nose and mouth is a simple but powerful way to protect ourselves and others during a pandemic, face masks may interfere with how we perceive and recognize one another, and hence, may have far-reaching impacts on communication and social interactions. To date, it remains relatively unknown the extent to which…