147 Word count (body): 3420 Word count (notes + Acknowledgement) 581 Author Notes Most of this work was done while the author was with Cambridge Basic Research, Nissan Research & Development, Inc., Cambridge, MA USA. Many thanks to Duncan Bryce, Puishan Lam, Nayantara Santhi, and Monica Strauss for their help in running the experiments. Correspondence should be addressed to R.A. Rensink, Depart...

An important and often laborious task in foreign language acquisition is vocabulary learning. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that performing iconic gestures together with novel words has a beneficial effect on learning performance. Can these findings be transferred onto virtual agents applied in gesture-supported vocabulary training? We present a study investigating whether iconic gesture...

Vocabulary acquisition represents a major challenge in foreign language learning. Research has demonstrated that gestures accompanying speech have an impact on memory for verbal information in the speakers' mother tongue and, as recently shown, also in foreign language learning. However, the neural basis of this effect remains unclear. In a within-subjects design, we compared learning of novel ...

It has been suggested that the systematic decline of partial report as the delay of the partial-report cue increases is due to a time-related loss of location information. Moreover, the backward masking effect is said to be precipitated by the disruption of location information before and after identification. Results from three experiments do not support these claims when new indices of locati...

OBJECTIVE Previous studies report reduced visual event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes in young males at high risk for alcoholism. These findings could involve difficulties at several stages of visual processing. This study was aimed at examining vigilance performance and iconic memory functions in children at high risk or low risk for alcoholism. METHOD Sustained vigilance and retrieval f...