Lexicosemantic, affective, and distributional norms for 1,000 Dutch adjectives.

The research of the word is still very much the research of the noun. Adjectives have been largely overlooked, despite being the second-largest word class in many languages and serving an important communicative function, because of the rich, nuanced qualifications they afford. Adjectives are also ideally suited to study the interface between cognition and emotion, as they naturally cover the entire range of lexicosemantic variables such as imageability (infinite-green), and affective variables such as valence (sad-happy).

The association between symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical magnitude processing and mental versus algorithmic subtraction in adults.

There are two well-known computation methods for solving multi-digit subtraction items, namely mental and algorithmic computation. It has been contended that mental and algorithmic computation differentially rely on numerical magnitude processing, an assumption that has already been examined in children, but not yet in adults. Therefore, in this study, we examined how numerical magnitude processing was associated with mental and algorithmic computation, and whether this association with numerical magnitude processing was different for mental versus algorithmic computation.

The association between children's numerical magnitude processing and mental multi-digit subtraction.

Children apply various strategies to mentally solve multi-digit subtraction problems and the efficient use of some of them may depend more or less on numerical magnitude processing. For example, the indirect addition strategy (solving 72-67 as "how much do I have to add up to 67 to get 72?"), which is particularly efficient when the two given numbers are close to each other, requires to determine the proximity of these two numbers, a process that may depend on numerical magnitude processing. In the present study, children completed a numerical magnitude comparison task and a number line estimation task, both in a symbolic and nonsymbolic format, to measure their numerical magnitude processing.

Aesthetic preference for spatial composition in multiobject pictures.

Five experiments examined preferences for horizontal positions in multiobject pictures. In Experiment 1, each picture contained a fixed object and an object whose position could be adjusted to create the most (or least) aesthetically pleasing image. Observers placed the movable object closer to the fixed object when the objects were related than when they were unrelated (a relatedness bias) but almost never overlapped them (a separation bias).

Aesthetic preferences in the size of images of real-world objects.

Konkle and Oliva (in press, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance) found that the preferred ('canonical') visual size of a picture of an object within a frame is proportional to the logarithm of its known physical size. They used within-participants designs on several tasks, including having participants adjust the object's size to 'look best'. We examined visual size preference in 2AFC tasks with explicit aesthetic instructions to choose: "which of each pair you like best".