Long-term semantic memory (LTM) is known for affecting recall during working memory (WM) tasks. However, the way LTM intervenes in WM remains unknown. Moreover, the available findings are incongruent concerning how attention modulates the impact of LTM on WM. To examine this issue, the involvement of LTM representations in a complex span task was…

The purpose of this study was to identify differences in the length of attention in 2-year-olds across three teaching conditions. A total of 49 2-year-olds were observed within their childcare classrooms. The child's regular classroom teacher was asked to select three highly preferred toys to use in offering the child choices within the teaching…

Although the literature regarding associations between young children's social emotional competencies and their executive functions (EF) is growing, there continue to be divergent accounts of the relationship between specific challenging behaviors (e.g., impulsivity, aggression, defiance, short attention span, withdrawal) and particular EF…

Purpose: Few studies have assessed listening effort (LE)--the cognitive resources required to perceive speech--among populations with intact hearing but reduced availability of cognitive resources. Attention/deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is theorized to restrict attention span, possibly making speech perception in adverse conditions more…

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has considerably heightened health and financial concerns for many individuals. Similar concerns, such as those associated with poverty, impair performance on cognitive control tasks. If ongoing concerns about COVID-19 substantially increase the tendency to mind wander in tasks requiring sustained…

Although working memory spans are, on average, lower for older adults than young adults, we demonstrate in 5 experiments a way in which older adults paradoxically resemble higher capacity young adults. Specifically, in a selective-listening task, older adults almost always failed to notice their names presented in an unattended channel. This is an…

This study examines the extent to which iron deficiency in infancy contributes to adverse neurocognitive and educational outcomes in young adulthood directly and indirectly, through its influence on verbal cognition and attention problems in childhood. Young adults (N = 1,000, M age = 21.3 years, 52% female; of Spanish or indigenous descent) from…

Traditionally diagnosed in children, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is now regarded as a life span condition. The academic difficulties experienced by children and adolescents with ADHD have been observed to continue into young adulthood. Treatment outcome studies demonstrate that behavioral and pharmacotherapeutic interventions…

Sounds deviating from an otherwise repeated or structured sequence capture attention and affect performance in an ongoing visual task negatively, testament to the balance between selective attention and change detection. Although deviance distraction has been the object of much research, its modulation across the life span has been more scarcely…

Background: Understanding the different factors that determine vocabulary development in young children is essential for the diagnosis and rehabilitation of language disorders in children. Language development is closely related to other cognitive processes such as auditory verbal learning and memory. This research focuses on the development of a…

Although it has been proposed that maintenance of verbal information in adults' working memory relies on two strategies, articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing, little is known about the interplay of these strategies in children. To examine strategy changes around the age of seven, children were asked to maintain digits during a…

The Hebb repetition paradigm has recently attracted attention as a measure of serial order learning, which underlies word-form learning abilities. Although children are good vocabulary learners, it is surprising that previous Hebb learning studies with young children show rather weak Hebb effects. In this study, we conducted two experiments to…

This study aimed at investigating the ability to learn regularities across the life span and examine whether this learning process can be supported or hampered by verbalizations. For this purpose, children (aged 8-10 years) and younger (aged 19-30 years) and older (aged 70-80 years) adults took part in a sequence learning experiment. We found that…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to determine how various aspects of cognition predict speech recognition ability across different levels of speech vocoding within a single group of listeners. Method: We tested the ability of young adults (N = 32) with normal hearing to recognize Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-set (PRESTO)…

The electrical signals in the brain can be analysed by performing spectral topographic brain mapping via Power Spectral Density. This brain mapping analysis can show the brain's different parts. Knowing dominant part(s) of the brain during reading activities enable to describe their attention levels when reading various books. The higher their…