Young children born very prematurely show elevated thresholds for global motion and global form [Atkinson, J. & Braddick, O. (2007). "Visual and visuocognitive development in children born very prematurely." "Progress in Brain Research, 164." 123-149; MacKay, T. L., Jakobson, L. S., Ellemberg, D., Lewis, T. L., Maurer, D., & Casiro, O. (2005).…

Implicit contextual learning refers to the ability to memorize contextual information from our environment. This contextual information can then be used to guide our attention to a specific location. Although the medial temporal lobe is important for this type of learning, the basal ganglia might also be involved considering its role in many…

Whilst there is general consensus that phonological processing is deficient in developmental dyslexia, recent research also implicates visuo-attentional contributions. Capitalising on the P3a wave of event-related potentials as an index of attentional capture, we tested dyslexic and normal readers on a novel variant of a visual oddball task to…

Hemispheric differences in the use of memory retrieval cues were examined in a continuous recognition design, using visual half-field presentation to bias the processing of test words. A speeded recognition task revealed general accuracy and response time advantages for items whose test presentation was biased to the left hemisphere. A second…

To assess the role of shape information for unfamiliar face learning, we investigated effects of photorealistic spatial anticaricaturing and caricaturing on later face recognition. We assessed behavioural performance and event-related brain potential (ERP) correlates of recognition, using different images of anticaricatures, veridical faces, or…

Several empirical lines of investigation support the idea that syllable-sized units may be involved in visual word recognition processes. In this perspective, the present study aimed at investigating further the nature of the process that causes syllabic effects in reading. To do so, the syllable frequency effect was investigated in French using…

Why females generally perform better on language tasks than males is unknown. Sex differences were here identified in children (ages 9-15) across two linguistic tasks for words presented in two modalities. Bilateral activation in the inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri and activation in the left fusiform gyrus of girls was greater than in…

Neuroimaging studies investigating the neural network of visuospatial processing have revealed a right hemisphere network of activation including inferior parietal lobe, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and extrastriate regions. Impaired visuospatial processing, indicated by the Judgment of Line Orientation (JLO), is commonly seen in individuals…

Evidence from experiments designed to elicit the phenomenon of perisaccadic mislocalization of briefly presented probe stimuli suggests that mechanisms implicated in the planning of a saccade are also implicated in the means by which spatial constancy is maintained across saccades. We postulated that impairments of visual attention observed in…

Long-term memory (LTM) is enhanced for emotional information, but the influence of stimulus emotionality on short-term memory (STM) is less clear. We examined the electrophysiological correlates of improved visual STM for emotional face identity, focusing on the P1, N170, P3b and N250r event-related potential (ERP) components. These correlates are…

Comparisons of word and picture processing using event-related potentials (ERPs) are contaminated by gross physical differences between the two types of stimuli. In the present study, we tackle this problem by comparing picture processing with word processing in an alphabetic and a logographic script, that are also characterized by gross physical…

The ability for mental calculation represents a fundamental prerequisite for development of intelligence, which is predictive for educational and professional success in life. Many individuals with calculation difficulties are survivors of premature birth. The brain mechanisms of these deficits are, however, largely unknown. In this work, we…

The recent neuroimaging literature gives conflicting evidence about whether the left fusiform gyrus (FG) might recognize words as unitary visual objects. The sensitivity of the left FG to word frequency might provide a neural basis for the orthographic input lexicon theorized by reading models [Patterson, K., Marshall, J. C., & Coltheart, M.…

We investigated the behavioral and brain responses (ERPs) of bilingual word recognition to three fundamental psycholinguistic factors, frequency, morphology, and lexicality, in early bilinguals vs. monolinguals. Earlier behavioral studies have reported larger frequency effects in bilinguals' nondominant vs. dominant language and in some studies…

The neural mechanisms that underlie familiarity memory have been extensively investigated, but a consensus understanding remains elusive. Behavioral evidence suggests that familiarity sometimes shares sources with instances of implicit memory known as priming, in that the same increases in processing fluency that give rise to priming can engender…