We humans are faced with an interesting problem: That which we think we un derstand the most-our own behavior-we probably understand the least. On the eve of a new millennium. the planet is beset by a host of problems that are. for the most part. caused by human behavior. Ironically. although it seems that the greatest impact of our behavior is on the planet and its other inhabitants. we may actually be threatening our own future the most. For example. we have caused untold harm to the air we breathe. to the water we drink. and. by exten sion. to much of the food we eat. More important perhaps. we have created a so ciety in which. among other things. many people are anxious and depressed. young women starve themselves. and alcohol and cigarette use are responsible for hundreds of thousands of cases of illness and death every year. And humans still murder one another at an astounding rate. while at the same time continu ing to affirm the value of human life. At a time when it is critical that our chil dren become educated. more and more children are not learning the basic skills they will need to think logically so that they can begin to solve the world's problems. The question may be not "Can the planet survive?" but. rather. "Can we humans survive and change our own destructive actions?" Although many scholars. philosophers."

As we begin a new century, the astonishing spread of nationally and internationally accessible computer-based communication networks has touched the imagination of people everywhere. Suddenly, the Internet is in everyday parlance, featured in talk shows, in special business "technology" sections of major newspapers, and on the covers of national magazines. If the Internet is a new world of social behavior it is also a new world for those who study social behavior. This volume is a compendium of essays and research reports representing how researchers are thinking about the social processes of electronic communication and its effects in society. Taken together, the chapters comprise a first gathering of social psychological research on electronic communication and the Internet.
The authors of these chapters work in different disciplines and have different goals, research methods, and styles. For some, the emergence and use of new technologies represent a new perspective on social and behavioral processes of longstanding interest in their disciplines. Others want to draw on social science theories to understand technology. A third group holds to a more activist program, seeking guidance through research to improve social interventions using technology in domains such as education, mental health, and work productivity. Each of these goals has influenced the research questions, methods, and inferences of the authors and the "look and feel" of the chapters in this book.
Intended primarily for researchers who seek exposure to diverse approaches to studying the human side of electronic communication and the Internet, this volume has three purposes:
* to illustrate how scientists are thinking about the social processes and effects of electronic communication;
* to encourage research-based contributions to current debates on electronic communication design, applications, and policies; and
* to suggest, by example, how studies of electronic communication can contribute to social science itself.

Motivation and Culture brings together an international list of writers with a variety of academic backgrounds and cultural experiences to explore the ways culture influences motivation. Traditionally, culture has long been neglected by those interested in motivation theories; instead, the focus has been on the individual in relation to biological and cognitive models. While the biological component of motivation is not neglected in this volume, most of the essays emphasize the ways culture needs to be taken into consideration both in formulating theories of motivation and applying them to the modern multicultural world.

Recently, there has been a renewal of interest in the broad and loosely bounded range of phenomena called deception and self-deception. This volume addresses this interest shared by philosophers, social and clinical psychologists, and more recently, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. Expert contributors provide timely, reliable, and insightful coverage of the normal range of errors in perception, memory, and behavior. They place these phenomena on a continuum with various syndromes and neuropsychiatric diseases where falsehood in perception, self-perception, cognition, and behaviors are a peculiar sign. Leading authorities examine the various forms of "mythomania," deception, and self-deception ranging from the mundane to the bizarre such as imposture, confabulations, minimization of symptomatology, denial, and anosognosia. Although the many diverse phenomena discussed here share a family resemblance, they are unlikely to have a common neurological machinery. In order to reach an explanation for these phenomena, a reliable pattern of lawful behavior must be delineated. It would then be possible to develop reasonable explanations based upon the underlying neurobiological processes that give rise to deficiencies designated as the mythomanias. The chapters herein begin to provide an outline of such a development. Taken as a whole, the collection is consistent with the emerging gospel indicating that neither the machinery of "nature" nor the forces of "nurture" taken alone are capable of explaining what makes cognition and behaviors aberrant.

Why do some young adults substantially change their patterns of smoking, drinking, or illicit drug use after graduating from high school? In this book, the authors show that leaving high school and leaving home create new freedoms that are linked to increases in the use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. They also show that marriage, pregnancy, and parenthood create new responsibilities that are linked to decreases in drug use.
The research is based on more than 33,000 young people followed from high school through young adulthood by the nationwide Monitoring the Future project. Every two years, participants reported on their drug use, as well as their schooling, employment, military service, living arrangements, marriages, pregnancies, parenthood, and even their divorces.
The unique qualities of this research--large nationally representative samples, follow-ups extending up to 14 years beyond high school, and multiple approaches to analysis and data presentation--allowed the examination of several important influences simultaneously, while retaining much of the rich detail encountered in the real world. On the whole, the results are encouraging, suggesting that the potentials for change and improvement during the transition to adulthood are as important as the detrimental effects of problem behavior in adolescence. This research is a "must" read for anyone concerned with how new freedoms and responsibilities impact adolescents, young adults, and the use of licit and illicit drugs.

The rationale behind how people value and trade stocks is of unparalleled interest to governments, companies and other participants in stock markets. The book focuses on the way in which investors process information and form expectations about future gains. It argues that humans fall short of the perfect information processing required by theory, and that their expectations are based on more than just future company earnings. Karl-Erik Warneryd discusses the psychology of investing, providing detailed coverage of how financial expectations are formed, how complex decisions are made and how emotions and influence from others affect the financial decisions of individuals. Empirical studies featured in the book suggest that many, if not most, stockholders have long-term goals, believe in certain stocks, and make few transactions - behavior which, argues the author, may have a stabilizing influence upon stock prices. As a unique overview of how investors process information and build up expectations of future gains on stocks, this fascinating book will be welcomed by students of, and researchers in, economic psychology and behavioral finance. Stock-Market Psychology will also be invaluable to practitioners of finance who wish to learn more about the psychology behind financial transactions.

This book was written with the belief that ordinal statistical methods--sometimes discussed under the title of "nonparametric statistics"--deserve much more serious attention as research tools than they have traditionally had. There are three classes of reasons for this:
*Many behavioral variables constitute only ordinal scales, not interval measurements that are required for traditional statistics.
*Various research issues that are of primary interest in behavioral research are themselves questions about order: Which group scores higher? Is the order on this variable similar to the order on that?
*Inferences from ordinal statistics are less subject to distributional peculiarities of the data than are those from traditional statistics.
Taking an innovative approach, this book treats ordinal methods in an integrated way rather than as a compendium of unrelated methods, and emphasizes that the ordinal quantities are highly meaningful in their own right, not just as stand-ins for more traditional correlations or analyses of variance. In fact, since the ordinal statistics have desirable descriptive properties of their own, the book treats them parametrically, rather then nonparametrically. The author discusses how ordinal statistics can be applied in a much wider set of research situations than has usually been thought, and that they can often come closer to answering the researcher's primary questions than traditional ones can. And he includes some extensions of ordinal methods in order to accomplish that end.

A year before his death, B.F. Skinner wrote that "There are two unavoidable gaps in any behavioral account: one between the stimulating action of the environment and the response of the organism and one between consequences and the resulting change in behavior. Only brain science can fill those gaps. In doing so, it completes the account; it does not give a different account of the same thing." This declaration ended the epoch of radical behaviorism to the extent that it was based on the doctrine of the "empty organism," the doctrine that a behavioral science must be constructed purely on its own level of investigation. However, Skinner was not completely correct in his assessment. Brain science on its own can no more fill the gaps than can single level behavioral science. It is the relation between data and formulations developed in the brain and the behavioral sciences that is needed.
This volume is the result of The Fourth Appalachian Conference on Behavioral Neurodynamics, the first three of which were aimed at filling Skinner's first gap. Taking the series in a new direction, the aim of the fourth and subsequent conferences is to explore the second of the gaps in the behavioral account noted by Skinner. The aim of this conference was to explore the aphorism: "The motivation for learning is self organization." In keeping with this aim and in the spirit of previous events, this conference's mission was to acquaint scientists working in one discipline with the work going on in other disciplines that is relevant to both. As a result, it brought together those who are making advances on the behavioral level -- mainly working in the tradition of operant conditioning -- and those working with brains -- mainly amygdala, hippocampus, and far frontal cortex.

One of the most profound insights of the dynamic systems perspective is that new structures resulting from the developmental process do not need to be planned in advance, nor is it necessary to have these structures represented in genetic or neurological templates prior to their emergence. Rather, new structures can emerge as components of the individual and the environment self-organize; that is, as they mutually constrain each other's actions, new patterns and structures may arise. This theoretical possibility brings into developmental theory the important concept of indeterminism--the possibility that developmental outcomes may not be predictable in any simple linear causal way from their antecedents.
This is the first book to take a critical and serious look at the role of indeterminism in psychological and behavioral development.
* What is the source of this indeterminism?
* What is its role in developmental change?
* Is it merely the result of incomplete observational data or error in measurement?
It reviews the concepts of indeterminism and determinism in their historical, philosophical, and theoretical perspectives--particularly in relation to dynamic systems thinking--and applies these general ideas to systems of nonverbal communication. Stressing the indeterminacy inherent to symbols and meaning making in social systems, several chapters address the issue of indeterminism from metaphorical, modeling, and narrative perspectives. Others discuss those indeterministic processes within the individual related to emotional, social, and cognitive development.

One of the most important practical problems in child psychology and psychia try is the differential diagnosis of emotional disorders. Until recently, the gener al mode of assessment had been to apply to children the characteristics of psychopathology that were evident in adults. In addition, there had been few assessment tools available for use with children aside from modified versions of adult instruments. Understandably, this approach was controversial, and dissat isfaction with it led to the more recent knowledge that adult and child problems may be manifested quite differently. The third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders takes these factors into account much more extensively than previous editions. Furthermore, a great deal of research on methodology in child assessment procedures has emerged recently. Yet, in spite of these advances, practicing clinicians are still frequently at a loss in moving from the characteristics of the disturbed child before them to the final assign ment of a psychiatric diagnosis. The focus of this book is to outline the various methods of viewing and categorizing the wide range childhood psycho pathology, with special emphasis on the end product of making a differential diagnosis. Our goal was to make this book unique in several ways. First, we attempted to cover a wider range of disorders than is typical in currently available hand books."

Being sick is a normal part of childhood, and being seriously ill is the unfortunate lot of many children. Every child in the United States has some contact with the healthcare system at some time, and it is estimated that one of every two children or adolescents is hospitalized as a result of illness or injury. Being injured, undergoing routine medical procedures, getting sick, or being hospitalized confront children with challenges on many levels--physical, mental, emotional, and social.
The premise of this volume is that developmental and psychological factors are central elements in many current problems in child health such as persistent crying in infants, sources of children's injury and respiratory illness, children's coping with medical procedures, childhood trauma, and physical and mental well-being in adolescence. Understanding, promoting, and maintaining children's health, therefore, depend to a great extent--and are likely to depend even more in the future--on elucidating the determinants and consequences of children's and parents' health-related behaviors and attitudes.
Chapter contributors include physicians and psychologists who apply principles of developmental and social psychology to their research on specific problems in children's health. Their offerings delineate current areas of collaboration between developmental psychology and behavioral pediatrics. These perspectives should prompt researchers and practitioners to explore additional ways in which more extensive endeavors at the interface of these two disciplines will facilitate efforts to understand children's health behaviors and foster children's well-being. Attention to this work should lead to moredirect clinical applicability and translation for preventive policy strategies as well as therapeutic interventions.

Breastfeeding is a biocultural phenomenon: not only is it a biological process, but it is also a culturally determined behavior. As such, it has important implications for understanding the past, present, and future condition of our species. In general, scholars have emphasized either the biological or the cultural aspects of breastfeeding, but not both. As biological anthropologists the editors of this volume feel that an evolutionary approach combining both aspects is essential. One of the goals of their book is to incorporate data from diverse fields to present a more holistic view of breastfeeding, through the inclusion of research from a number of different disciplines, including biological and social/cultural anthropology, nutrition, and medicine. The resulting book, presenting the complexity of the issues surrounding very basic decisions about infant nutrition, will fill a void in the existing literature on breastfeeding.

Managed care is a revolution impacting the practice of clinicians throughout America. The Clinician's Guide to Managed Behavioral Care, called "a survival kit" and "must reading," helps clinicians develop and market professional services attuned to the needs of managed care systems, manage the utilization process, and reshape an office practice or hospital-based program to become more "managed care friendly." It is newly referenced and updated for clinicians to continue to advocate for their patients and clients.The Clinician's Guide to Managed Behavioral Care addresses how clinicians can develop and market professional services attuned to the needs of managed care systems, how to best manage the utilization review process, how to re-shape an office practice or hospital-based program to become more "managed care friendly," and how to best advocate for patients and clients. Readers will understand the history and evolution of attempts to manage mental health care costs and services as well as the emerging clinical, economic, and social trends that will continue to fuel changes in the mental health field in coming years. Importantly, this guide sensitizes readers to the perspectives about mental health care benefits and the treatment field held by the payor community--insurance carriers, HMO's, and self-insured employers. It allows readers to consider a payor's view of how professionals can play a crucial role in providing quality services while helping control spiraling mental health care costs--costs that have escalated much faster than other segments of health care.Who can benefit from this book? Practicing psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, substance abuse counselors, marriage and family therapists, Employee Assistance Professionals, psychiatric nurses, professional counselors, program managers, hospital administrators, and health care marketing professionals will find The Clinician's Guide to Managed Behavioral Care and invaluable resource.It is often said that in the future, all in the treatment community will be involved in "managing care" and that the most successful clinicians and practices will be those most adept at working with managed care systems on behalf of their patients and clients. This book helps you understand how!Important topics in The Clinician's Guide to Managed Behavioral Care: the changing marketplace for mental health/substance abuse treatment services assessing market opportunities in light of managed care influences clinical service needs of managed care systems clinical innovations: examples, case studies, vignettes strategies for managing utilization review marketing strategies for office-based practitioners hospital-managed care partnerships contemporary office management strategies to control costs consumers and managed care directory of America's HMOs directory of America's Managed Mental Health Care Companies glossary of key terms

Although considerable progress has been made in the understanding and treatment of a range of medical disorders, it had recently been pointed out that 85 percent of the population will be stricken by chronic disorders which may be accompanied by many years of suffering.
This volume deals with issues of both cure and risk in chronic illnesses which are among the group of disorders associated with the leading causes of death in the United States at this time -- Alzheimer's disease, AIDS, and cancer. A consideration of the role of brain and behavior in relation to the cure and prevention of these disorders is the central focus of the various chapters in this book. Several chapters discuss the neuropsychological aspects of chronic illnesses including the underlying pathophysiology of changes in the brain which may be associated with both behavioral and physical signs and symptoms in these disorders. Considerable evidence suggests that a range of psychosocial or behavioral factors, such as stressful life events and depression, are associated with increased morbidity or mortality. Complex neurobiological pathways involving the brain, neurotransmitter, and neuroendocrine systems have been implicated. Other chapters consider some of the links among brain, behavior and chronic illnesses, as well as psychological factors such as coping and depression in relation to chronic disorders.
The three leading risk factors known to be associated with both chronic illnesses and death -- diet, tobacco, and alcohol -- are all related to behavioral choices. Sexual behavior can be added to the list in terms of HIV infection and acquired immunodeficiency disease (AIDS). Several chapters deal specifically with a consideration of sexual behavior and HIV infection which clearly highlight the need for scientific knowledge in human sexuality if effective long term preventive measures are to be developed while waiting for a vaccine or cure.
The search for cures must continue to have the highest priority in the scientific and clinical struggle against disease. Nonetheless, the value of psychosocial interventions on the quality of life and mental states of seriously ill persons should not be underestimated.

Contents:
Anger Disorders: Basic Science and Practice Issues. Diagnosis of Anger Disorders. Measuring the Experience, Expression and Control of Anger. A Behaviour-Analytic View of Anger and Aggression. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Anger. Anger and Criminality. Evaluation of Treatment Strategies for Adult Anger Disorders. Developing the Therapeutic Alliance with Angry Clients. Ideal Treatment for Adults with Anger Disorders. Ideal Treatment Package for Children and Adolescents with Anger Disorders. Conclusions and a Look to the Future.

In recent years, advocates for civil rights for minorities, women, and gays and lesbians have become more informed consumers of mental health services. As a result, social work practitioners need to prepare themselves to serve diverse constituencies for who previously held behavioral and cultural assumptions have proven not to be universally applicable. The purpose of Greene's book is to help students and practitioners better understand how social workers have used human behavior theories to more competently address variations in group and community membership within the social worker-client encounter.

The book's approach is largely thematic. Most of the chapters explore how particular assumptions of a human behavior theory--psychoanalytic theory, psychodynamic/ego psychology theory, systems theory, behavioral theory, symbolic interaction theory, feminist theory, constructionist theory, small group theory, and an ecological perspective --have been used to answer issues related to cultural diversity. The challenges and limitations of each theory's applications across varying client constituencies are discussed throughout. What sorts of new conceptual issues for the practitioner of family services are raised in work with minority families, for example, or with lesbian families? How does a specific theory help, or not help, in group-specific interventions and evaluations?

Intended as a companion volume to the widely adopted human behavior text by Greene and Ephross, Greene's new book fills the need for a wide, synthetic reading of the recent literature on divergent client populations.

"Roberta R. Greene" is the Louis and Ann Wolens Centennial Chair in Gerontology and Social Welfare at the University of Texas at Austin. She has authored numerous books and journal articles dealing with the application of conceptual frameworks to social work practice. She is a member of the editorial board of the "Journal of Social Work Education."

The number of, and interest in, quality of life studies has grown dramatically in the last decade. On an ever increasing basis, patients, clinicians, researchers, and health policy regulators are considering quality of life in assessing treatment alternatives. Unfortunately, most discussions of quality of life are narrow in scope -- applying to only one disease group. This unique book represents the concerted effort of experts in academia, federal government health care regulators, and pharmaceutical industry representatives to define the promise and the problems associated with quality of life studies. The issues covered range from cross cutting ones to those that are specific to particular illnesses.
Because quality of life takes into consideration such domains as mood, vocation, family, sexual functioning, social participation, and costs, this book will serve as an invaluable companion to readers with an interest in behavioral medicine research.

This book represents a social psychological approach to the study of emotion. The contributors present empirical data using the 'time sampling' or 'experience sampling' technique developed by Brandstätter. This technique allows researchers to gain direct access to the phenomenological experiences of subjects without the distorting effects of recall. Populations studied include bank employees, factory workers, housewives, and the unemployed.

In this book we have attempted to confront a number of issues that are intimately related to the theoretical basis of behavior therapy. We believe that behavior therapy is an extremely efficient procedure for the treatment of neurotic disorders; that it is based on certain principles derived from learning theory; and that it is unique in using basic scientific principles in psychology in the service of applied and practical ends. We believe that we are here dealing with much more than the advantageous use of serendipitous borrowings from nonexistent principles, the cookbook collection of precepts, methods, and working rules that happen to have lasting effects. We also believe that there is truly a general principle unde. rlying behavior therapy, rather than a varied mass of nonintegrated therapies that have little in common other than a name. These beliefs are often contes ted, but usually those who oppose them do so on the basis of misconceptions and misunderstandings that indicate a lack of knowledge of fundamental facts. It is the purpose of this book to remove these misconceptions and misunderstandings, and to bring up to date our knowledge in certain fundamental areas of learning theory, behavior therapy, and the biological foundations of per sonality and individual differences. There are three major groups of misconceptions and misunderstandings. The first of these relates to beliefs held by many psychiatrists and cognitive psychologists relating to behavior therapy."

This volume deals with the visual perception of lightness, brightness, and transparency of surfaces, both under minimal laboratory conditions and in complex images typical of everyday life. Each chapter analyzes the challenging problem of how a pattern of light intensities on the retina is transformed into the visual experience of varying shades of grey, transparent surfaces, and light and shadow. One important theme which unifies the group of contributions is the recognition that the perception of surface lightness is rooted fundamentally in the encoding of relative intensities of light within the retinal image, not intensities per se. A second important unifying theme is an appreciation of the multiple dimensions of the visual experience of lightness, brightness, and transparency -- people do not perceive the lightness of surfaces by discarding information concerning the light illuminating those surfaces; rather, they perceive a pattern of illumination projected onto a pattern of surface greys.
The long-fascinating problems of surface lightness and color perception have become very active topics recently as a resurging interest within the visual perception community has coincided with an increasing appreciation of the centrality of these problems by the emerging machine vision community. The best of recent psychophysical work on lightness perception, as presented in this volume, will be of great interest to both of these communities. This book also marks a synthesis of old and new. A traditional, strongly Gestalt, approach that had fallen into neglect is updated in the light of new quantitative systematic methods and important later discoveries, such as the disappearance of stabilized retinal images. The book draws on such diverse approaches as Gestalt and ecological psychology, threshold psychophysics, and computational vision, advancing our understanding of the interrelations among surface color, illumination, perceived depth, shading, and transparency.

Blending academic theory with policy guidelines and practical suggestions, this book provides a review of current approaches to assessment and Intervention For Children With Emotional And Behavioural Difficulties. It incorporates a discussion of government guidelines on policy and provision with schools and LEAs and reviews a range of successful innovations in intervention. Specific areas are covered, including Exclusion, Integration And Emotional Abuse.; Five Recurring Themes permeate the whole book, these being: the effects of government legislation on all aspects of EBD assessment and provision; the recognition that children with EBD come from economically and socially disadvantaged families and the implication that this has for assessment and provision; the problems of agreeing on an acceptable definition of EBD; the fact that children labelled as EBD do not have an equal opportunity to assessment and provision; and the belief that schools can make a substantial contribution to the prevention of EBD.

The Oxford Handbook of Functional Brain Imaging in Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neurosciences describes in a readily accessible manner the several functional neuroimaging methods and critically appraises their applications that today account for a large part of the contemporary cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology literature. The complexity and the novelty of these methods often cloud appreciation of the methods' contributions and future promise. The Handbook begins with an overview of the basic concepts of functional brain imaging common to all methods, and proceeds with a description of each of them, namely magnetoencephalography (MEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Its second part covers the various research applications of functional neuroimaging on issues like the function of the default mode network; the possibility and the utility of imaging of consciousness; the search for mnemonic traces of concepts; human will and decision-making; motor cognition; language; the mechanisms of affective states and pain; the presurgical mapping of the brain; and others. As such, the volume reviews the methods and their contributions to current research and comments on the degree to which they have enhanced our understanding of the relation between neurophysiological activity and sensory, motor, and cognitive functions. Moreover, it carefully considers realistic contributions of functional neuroimaging to future endeavors in cognitive neuroscience, medicine, and neuropsychology.

This book brings together a group of scholars to share findings and insights on the effects of media on children and family. Their contributions reflect not only widely divergent political orientations and value systems, but also three distinct domains of inquiry into human motivation and behavior -- social scientific, psychodynamic (or psychoanalytical), and clinical practice. Each of these three domains is privy to important evidence and insights that need to transcend epistemological and methodological boundaries if understanding of the subject is to improve dramatically. In keeping with this notion, the editors asked the authors to go beyond a summary of findings, and lend additional distinction to the book by applying the "binoculars" of their particular perspective and offering suggestions as to the implications of their findings.
One of the goals of the conference that resulted in this book was consensus building in the area of media and family. From examining the findings and insights of a diverse group of scholars, it seems that consensus building in several areas is a distinct possibility. Addressing the concerns of educators about the influence of the mass media of communication -- entertainment programs in particular -- on children and the welfare of the nuclear family, this volume projects directions for superior programming, especially for educational television. The influence of sex and violence on children and adults is given much attention, and the development of moral judgment and sexual expectations, among other things, is explored. The critical analysis of media effects includes examination of positive contributions of the media, such as the search for missing children and exemplary educational programs.

Aggression usually involves a sequence of behaviors, reflecting escalations and de-escalations in the form or intensity of the actions taken, which play out over time. This book provides a context in which social and biological research on the aggressive behaviors of human and non-human subjects, interacting in dyads or groups, can be compared and integrated. Implicit in this juxtaposition is the major question of whether general principles governing the dynamics of aggression within and between episodes may be discerned. Aggressive behavior is described at different levels of analysis in humans and a number of other animal species. Three basic views of aggression dynamics become apparent:
* The economic interpretation: Aggression will be escalated when it pays one of the combatants to do so or, more generally, when the potential benefits outweigh the risks. Decisions to escalate or de-escalate are part of a calculated "strategy," in one or another sense. This interpretation is formalized within game theoretic models as applied to animal conflicts and to international conflicts, within the chapters of this text.
* The psychological process interpretation: Emphasis is placed on psychological/physiological processes within the individual. The chapters stress the importance of acute emotional states of anger and aggressive arousal and argue the role of peripheral sympathetic activation, while proposing a central neural mechanism. Children escalating their tantrums, adult humans and animals of other species intensifying their interpersonal conflicts, national leaders going to a war footing all appear to suffer a narrowing of attention and progressive failure of cognitive function under the intensifying stress of conflict. Perhaps these changes in attention, sensory and cognitive functions, and risk taking reflect a "commitment to aggression" which is necessary for organisms to engage in potentially dangerous and painful encounters.
* The emergent process interpretation: Escalation emerges in a spontaneous and dynamic way as the actions of one participant elicit reactions from the other(s).

This book presents a new approach to understanding the family unit and how and why it functions as it does. The approach focuses on the cognitions of family members and how these, in turn, shape individuals' behavior and the functioning of the family system.
The use of the cognitive-behavioral perspective in family science has gained a quick and broad acceptance among social scientists and practitioners during the past decade. One reason for its success is that the basics of the approach are easy to learn and apply. Specifically, the approach maintains that a person who believes that he or she is a failure will -- because of this cognition -- act in certain self-defeating ways and have various self-deprecating feelings.
The wide acceptance of the cognitive-behavioral approach rests on more than its simplicity: the approach has repeatedly proven itself in the laboratory and in the clinic. The knowledge readers of this volume will gain about the cognitive-behavioral approach provides them with tools that they can use to better understand not only the family interactions, but the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals -- including themselves -- in the family setting.