Articles

Mastering algebra retrains the visual system to perceive hierarchical structure in equations

Formal mathematics is a paragon of abstractness. It thus seems natural to assume that the mathematical expert should rely more on symbolic or conceptual processes, and less on perception and action. We argue i...

Authors: Tyler Marghetis, David Landy and Robert L. Goldstone

Design of embodied interfaces for engaging spatial cognition

Aspects of spatial cognition, specifically spatial skills, are strongly correlated with interest and success in STEM courses and STEM-related professions. Because growth in STEM-related industries is expected ...

Authors: Paul G. Clifton, Jack Shen-Kuen Chang, Georgina Yeboah, Alison Doucette, Sanjay Chandrasekharan, Michael Nitsche, Timothy Welsh and Ali Mazalek

Interactivity mitigates the impact of working memory depletion on mental arithmetic performance

Doing long sums in the absence of complementary actions or artefacts is a multistep procedure that quickly taxes working memory; congesting the phonological loop further handicaps performance. In the experimen...

Authors: Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau, Miroslav Sirota and Gaëlle Vallée-Tourangeau

Creating visual explanations improves learning

Many topics in science are notoriously difficult for students to learn. Mechanisms and processes outside student experience present particular challenges. While instruction typically involves visualizations, s...

Authors: Eliza Bobek and Barbara Tversky

Spatial analogies pervade complex relational reasoning: Evidence from spontaneous gestures

How do people think about complex phenomena like the behavior of ecosystems? Here we hypothesize that people reason about such relational systems in part by creating spatial analogies, and we explore this poss...

Authors: Kensy Cooperrider, Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow

Use-inspired basic research in medical image perception

This journal is dedicated to “use-inspired basic research” where a problem in the world shapes the hypotheses for a study in the laboratory. This brief review presents several examples of “use-inspired basic r...

Authors: Jeremy M. Wolfe

Understanding visual attention in childhood: Insights from a new visual foraging task

A recently developed visual foraging task, involving multiple targets of different types, can provide a rich and dynamic picture of visual attention performance. We measured the foraging performance of 66 chil...

Authors: Inga María Ólafsdóttir, Tómas Kristjánsson, Steinunn Gestsdóttir, Ómar I. Jóhannesson and Árni Kristjánsson

Talking to your car can drive you to distraction

This research examined the impact of in-vehicle information system (IVIS) interactions on the driver’s cognitive workload; 257 subjects participated in a weeklong evaluation of the IVIS interaction in one of t...

Authors: David L. Strayer, Joel M. Cooper, Jonna Turrill, James R. Coleman and Rachel J. Hopman

Looming sounds are perceived as faster than receding sounds

Each year thousands of people are killed by looming motor vehicles. Throughout our evolutionary history looming objects have posed a threat to survival and perceptual systems have evolved unique solutions to c...

Authors: John G. Neuhoff

Through the Google Glass: The impact of heads-up displays on visual attention

In five experiments, we evaluated how secondary information presented on a heads-up display (HUD) impacts performance of a concurrent visual attention task. To do so, we had participants complete a primary vis...

Authors: Joanna E. Lewis and Mark B. Neider

That’s not what you said the first time: A theoretical account of the relationship between consistency and accuracy of recall

Over multiple response opportunities, recall may be inconsistent. For example, an eyewitness may report information at trial that was not reported during initial questioning—a phenomenon called reminiscence. Such...

Authors: Sarah E. Stanley and Aaron S. Benjamin

Relative judgment theory and the mediation of facial recognition: Implications for theories of eyewitness identification

Many in the eyewitness identification community believe that sequential lineups are superior to simultaneous lineups because simultaneous lineups encourage inappropriate choosing due to promoting comparisons a...

Authors: Ryan M. McAdoo and Scott D. Gronlund

Visual search behaviors of association football referees during assessment of foul play situations

It is well reported that expert athletes have refined perceptual-cognitive skills and fixate on more informative areas during representative tasks. These perceptual-cognitive skills are also crucial to perform...

Authors: Jochim Spitz, Koen Put, Johan Wagemans, A. Mark Williams and Werner F. Helsen

How to optimize switch virtual keyboards to trade off speed and accuracy

In some circumstances, people interact with a virtual keyboard by triggering a binary switch to guide a moving cursor to target characters or items. Such switch keyboards are commonly used by patients with sev...

Authors: Xiao Zhang, Kan Fang and Gregory Francis

Visual completion from 2D cross-sections: Implications for visual theory and STEM education and practice

Accurately inferring three-dimensional (3D) structure from only a cross-section through that structure is not possible. However, many observers seem to be unaware of this fact. We present evidence for a 3D amo...

Authors: Kristin Michod Gagnier and Thomas F. Shipley

On the learning benefits of confidence-weighted testing

Taking multiple-choice practice tests with competitive incorrect alternatives can enhance performance on related but different questions appearing on a later cued-recall test (Little et al., Psychol Sci 23:133...

Authors: Erin M. Sparck, Elizabeth Ligon Bjork and Robert A. Bjork

From hands to minds: Gestures promote understanding

Gestures serve many roles in communication, learning and understanding both for those who view them and those who create them. Gestures are especially effective when they bear resemblance to the thought they r...

Authors: Seokmin Kang and Barbara Tversky

Men’s perceptions of women’s sexual interest: Effects of environmental context, sexual attitudes, and women’s characteristics

Men’s perceptions of women’s sexual interest were studied in a sample of 250 male undergraduates, who rated 173 full-body photos of women differing in expressed cues of sexual interest, attractiveness, provoca...

Authors: Teresa A. Treat, Hannah Hinkel, Jodi R. Smith and Richard J. Viken

ROC curve analyses of eyewitness identification decisions: An analysis of the recent debate

How should the accuracy of eyewitness identification decisions be measured, so that best practices for identification can be determined? This fundamental question is under intense debate. One side advocates fo...

Authors: Caren M. Rotello and Tina Chen

Learning to interpret topographic maps: Understanding layered spatial information

Novices struggle to interpret maps that show information about continuous dimensions (typically latitude and longitude) layered with information that is inherently continuous but segmented categorically. An ex...

Authors: Kinnari Atit, Steven M. Weisberg, Nora S. Newcombe and Thomas F. Shipley

Seeing the unseen? Illusory causal filling in FIFA referees, players, and novices

Humans often falsely report having seen a causal link between two dynamic scenes if the second scene depicts a valid logical consequence of the initial scene. As an example, a video clip shows someone kicking ...

Authors: Alisa Brockhoff, Markus Huff, Annika Maurer and Frank Papenmeier

Rethinking the basic-applied dichotomy

Authors: Jeremy M. Wolfe

Bayesian reasoning in residents’ preliminary diagnoses

Whether and when humans in general, and physicians in particular, use their beliefs about base rates in Bayesian reasoning tasks is a long-standing question. Unfortunately, previous research on whether doctors...

Authors: Benjamin Margolin Rottman, Micah T. Prochaska and Roderick Corro Deaño