Visuospatial processing is key to learn and perform professionally in the domains of health and natural sciences. As such, there is accumulating research showing the importance of visuospatial processing for education in diverse health sciences (e.g., medicine, anatomy, surgery) and in many natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics, geology). In general, visuospatial processing is treated separately as (a) spatial ability and (b) working memory with visuospatial stimuli. This book attempts to link these two research perspectives and present visuospatial processing as the cognitive activity of two components of working memory (mostly the visuospatial sketch pad, and also the central executive), which allows to perform in both spatial ability and working memory tasks. Focusing on university education in the fields of health sciences and natural sciences, the chapters in this book describe the abilities of mental rotation, mental folding, spatial working memory, visual working memory, among others, and how different variables affect them. Some of these variables, thoroughly addressed in the book, are sex (gender), visualizations, interactivity, cognitive load, and embodiment. The book concludes with a chapter presenting VAR, a battery of computer-based tests to measure different tasks entailing visuospatial processing. With contributions by top educational psychologists from around the globe, this book will be of interest to a broad array of readers across the disciplines.

This book covers all aspects of the visual system from sensory aspects to eye movements, attention, and visual memory. There are many books that cover the psychology and physiology of a single aspect of vision, such as color vision or eye movements. Other larger texts may offer encyclopedic coverage of the psychology of all aspects of vision. However, this is the only book on the market covering the psychology, anatomy, and physiology of all aspects of the visual system in 300 pages. Each chapter addresses a separate aspect of vision, describing the basic phenomena, where in the brain this aspect of vision occurs, the properties of the cells in those areas, and the deficits that result from a lesion or stroke in those areas. In addition to extensive illustrations, the book contains the author's selection of the literature, from the classic 19th century papers to the present. This text is designed for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in psychology, optometry, physiology, anatomy, and medicine who want to get a broad view rather than one confined to their particular discipline.

This book is about computational models of reading, or models that explain (and often simulate) the mental processes that allow us to convert the marks on a printed page into the representations that allow us to understand the contents of what we are reading. Computational Models of Reading assumes no prior knowledge of the topic and is intended for psychologists, linguists, and educators who are interested in gaining a better understanding of what happens in the mind during reading. Erik D. Reichle includes introductory chapters on reading research and computational modelling, and the "core" chapters of the book review both important empirical findings and the models designed to explain those findings within four domains of reading research: word identification, sentence processing, discourse representation, and eye-movement control (which involves coordinating word, sentence, and discourse processing with the perceptual, cognitive, and motoric systems responsible for vision, attention, and eye movements). The final chapter of the book describes a new integrative model of reading, UEber-Reader, and several simulations using the models that demonstrate how it explains several key reading phenomena.

Ruth Millikan is well known for having developed a strikingly original way for philosophers to seek understanding of mind and language, which she sees as biological phenomena. She now draws together a series of groundbreaking essays which set out her approach to language. Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Millikan offers a fundamentally different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, comparing them to biological norms that emerge from natural selection. This yields novel and quite radical consequences for our understanding of the nature of public linguistic meaning, the process of language understanding, how children learn language, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction.

Do You Struggle With Staying Focused? Do you want to be able to concentrate better? Do you struggle with lack of focus and procrastination starts to settle in? Are you looking to increase your learning capacity? These effective strategies and exercises will improve your learning. You'll be excited to see your productivity and efficiency increase dramatically allowing you to laser in on tasks. Within this book's pages, you will find the answers to these questions and more. Just some of the questions and topics include: *Mental Exercises to Boost Concentration* *Methods for Improving Learning Capacity* *Various Techniques to Improve Your Learning* *How To Improve Your Memory* *10 Tips Specifically For Concentration at Work* This book breaks training down into easy-to-understand modules. It starts from the very beginning of the science of concentration and how to improve it, so you can get great results - and be less distracted!

The book presents a new theory of personality, referred to as cognitive-experiential theory (CET). Currently there are a variety of personality theories that seem irreconcilable with each other. CET is integrative of all other major personality theories. This integration is accomplished by expanding upon current basic assumptions, including the assumption that all higher-order animals automatically construct an implicit theory of reality that is necessary for adapting to their environments and that is therefore inherently reinforcing. The system that accomplishes this is referred to as the experiential system, as it is an empirical system that adapts by automatically learning from experience. Because it operates without requiring conscious awareness it can be regarded as an adaptive unconscious system, however, this book reveals that the experiential system is not identical with an unconscious adaptive system, and is superior to that construct in several important respects. Humans, of course, also uniquely operate with a conscious, reasoning system, referred to in CET as a rational system. This book demonstrates how these two systems operate in parallel and influence each other in important ways. For example, the influence of the experiential on the rational system can account for why the human species, despite its outstanding intelligence in solving impersonal problems, which are mainly in the domain of the rational system, often think and behave unintelligently and destructively in solving interpersonal problems, which are primarily in the domain of the experiential system. Yet, neither system is generally superior to the other, and the book discusses how each system is superior in uniquely important ways.

In the last few years there has been an explosion of philosophical interest in perception; after decades of neglect, it is now one of the most fertile areas for new work. Perceptual Experience presents new work by fifteen of the world's leading philosophers. All papers are written specially for this volume, and they cover a broad range of topics dealing with sensation and representation, consciousness and awareness, and the connections between perception and knowledge and between perception and action. This will be the book on the philosophy of perception, a fascinating resource for philosophers and psychologists.

From the Foreword:
"In this book Joscha Bach introduces Dietrich Dorner's PSI architecture and Joscha's implementation of the MicroPSI architecture. These architectures and their implementation have several lessons for other architectures and models. Most notably, the PSI architecture includes drives and thus directly addresses questions of emotional behavior. An architecture including drives helps clarify how emotions could arise. It also changes the way that the architecture works on a fundamental level, providing an architecture more suited for behaving autonomously in a simulated world. PSI includes three types of drives, physiological (e.g., hunger), social (i.e., affiliation needs), and cognitive (i.e., reduction of uncertainty and expression of competency). These drives routinely influence goal formation and knowledge selection and application. The resulting architecture generates new kinds of behaviors, including context dependent memories, socially motivated behavior, and internally motivated task switching. This architecture illustrates how emotions and physical drives can be included in an embodied cognitive architecture.
The PSI architecture, while including perceptual, motor, learning, and cognitive processing components, also includes several novel knowledge representations: temporal structures, spatial memories, and several new information processing mechanisms and behaviors, including progress through types of knowledge sources when problem solving (the Rasmussen ladder), and knowledge-based hierarchical active vision. These mechanisms and representations suggest ways for making other architectures more realistic, more accurate, and easier to use.
The architecture is demonstrated in the Island simulated environment. While it may look like a simple game, it was carefully designed to allow multiple tasks to be pursued and provides ways to satisfy the multiple drives. It would be useful in its own right for developing other architectures interested in multi-tasking, long-term learning, social interaction, embodied architectures, and related aspects of behavior that arise in a complex but tractable real-time environment.
The resulting models are not presented as validated cognitive models, but as theoretical explorations in the space of architectures for generating behavior. The sweep of the architecture can thus be larger-it presents a new cognitive architecture attempting to provide a unified theory of cognition. It attempts to cover perhaps the largest number of phenomena to date. This is not a typical cognitive modeling work, but one that I believe that we can learn much from."
--Frank E. Ritter, Series Editor

Although computational models of cognition have become very popular, these models are relatively limited in their coverage of cognition-- they usually only emphasize problem solving and reasoning, or treat perception and motivation as isolated modules. The first architecture to cover cognition more broadly is PSI theory, developed by Dietrich Dorner. By integrating motivation and emotion with perception and reasoning, and including grounded neuro-symbolic representations, PSI contributes significantly to an integrated understanding of the mind. It provides a conceptual framework that highlights the relationships between perception and memory, language and mental representation, reasoning and motivation, emotion and cognition, autonomy and social behavior. It is, however, unfortunate that PSI's origin in psychology, its methodology, and its lack of documentation have limited its impact. The proposed book adapts Psi theory to cognitive science and artificial intelligence, by elucidating both its theoretical and technical frameworks, and clarifying its contribution to how we have come to understand cognition."

Making a Machine That Sees Like Us explains why and how our visual perceptions can provide us with an accurate representation of the external world. Along the way, it tells the story of a machine (a computational model) built by the authors that solves the computationally difficult problem of seeing the way humans do. This accomplishment required a radical paradigm shift - one that challenged preconceptions about visual perception and tested the limits of human behavior-modeling for practical application.
The text balances scientific sophistication and compelling storytelling, making it accessible to both technical and general readers. Online demonstrations and references to the authors' previously published papers detail how the machine was developed and what drove the ideas needed to make it work. The authors contextualize their new theory of shape perception by highlighting criticisms and opposing theories, offering readers a fascinating account not only of their revolutionary results, but of the scientific process that guided the way.

In "Mind and Maze: Spatial Cognition and Environmental Behavior," Ann Sloan Devlin takes the reader on a journey from the crib to the city, examining at each life phase the development of how we know where we are in space and our appreciation of spatial relationships. The author explores gender differences in spatial cognition, the parts of the brain that handle spatial relationships, and the principles that mapmakers and others use to create navigational aids, all in an effort to better identify the connection between certain behaviors and their relevance to real-world tasks. This book offers students, researchers, architects, and policy makers a fuller appreciation of spatial cognition and its impact on society.

Devlin examines a fundamental aspect of human behavior, that we are animals for whom functioning in space is essential to our survival, in a uniquely interdisciplinary way. Rather than narrowly limit her focus to a specific area of psychology, she discusses spatial cognition from many perspectives, from urban planning and architecture to developmental psychology and neuroscience. This book offers students, researchers, architects, and policy makers a fuller appreciation of spatial cognition and its impact on society.

G. William Domhoff presents a new neurocognitive theory of dreams in his book The Emergence of Dreaming. His theory stresses the similarities between dreaming and drifting waking thought, based on laboratory and non-laboratory studies that show as many as 70 to 80 percent of dreams are dramatized enactments of significant waking personal concerns about the past, present, and future. Domhoff discusses a developmental dimension of dreaming based on the unexpected laboratory discovery that young children dream infrequently and with less complexity until ages 9-11-supported by new findings with children who are awake that demonstrate the gradual emergence of cognitive skills necessary for dreaming. Domhoff's theory locates the neural substrate for dreaming in the same brain network now known to be most active during mind-wandering, and explains the transition into dreaming. Various strands of evidence lead to the conclusion that dreaming does not have any adaptive function, and is best viewed as an accidental by-product of adaptive waking cognitive abilities. However, cross-cultural and historical studies reveal that human inventiveness has made dreams an essential part of healing and religious ceremonies in many societies. Three chapters present detailed critiques of other current theories of dreams. The final chapter suggests how new and better studies of dreaming and its neurocognitive basis can be carried out using recent technological developments in both communications (e.g., smartphone apps) and neuroimaging (e.g., near infrared spectroscopy). As one of the first empirical and scientific treatments on dream research, The Emergence of Dreaming will be of interest to psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, sleep researchers, and psychiatrists.

The last decade has seen a major growth in research on how memory is used in everyday life. This volume represents a reaction to traditional laboratory-bound studies of the first half of the century which sought to identify the fundamental principles of learning and memory through the use of materials and methods totally divorced from the real world. The new wave of memory research has had considerable success in charting how memory develops, the role it plays in educational and social skills and the impact of memory impairment on mental life. The current volume consists of authoritative reviews of this emerging area linked to comment and criticism from major researchers in the field.

Contrasted, probably for the first time, are two major styles of research in applied memory research: The "naturalistic approach," which has sought to study memory in everyday environments, using actual experiences from people's lives as the raw data from which to derive more general principles, and the "applied cognitive approach," whereby theories and methods are developed using orthodox laboratory techniques which are then validated by applying them directly to real phenomena. This is one of the few books to bring together evidence across the very wide spectrum of humdrum activity that constitutes the everyday uses of memory.

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge's science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge's contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation (3 chapters) Section II. Philosophy (12 chapters) Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics (4 chapters) Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind (2 chapters) Section V. Sociology and Social Theory (4 chapters) Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy (3 chapters) Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology (3 chapters) Section VIII. Mathematics (3 chapters) Section IX. Education (2 chapters) Section X. Varia (3 chapters) Section XI. Bibliography

Time, it has been said, is the enemy. In an era of harried lives, time seems increasingly precious as hours and days telescope and our lives often seem to be flitting past. And yet, at other times, the minutes drag on, each tick of the clock excruciatingly drawn out. What explains this seeming paradox? Based upon a full decade's empirical research, Michael G. Flaherty's new book offers remarkable insights on this most universal human experience. Flaherty surveys hundreds of individuals of all ages in an attempt to ascertain how such phenomena as suffering, violence, danger, boredom, exhilaration, concentration, shock, and novelty influence our perception of time. Their stories make for intriguing reading, by turns familiar and exotic, mundane and dramatic, horrific and funny. A qualitative and quantitative tour de force, A Watched Pot presents what may well be the first fully integrated theory of time and will be of interest to scientists, humanists, social scientists and the educated public alike. A Choice Outstanding Academic Book.

This ambitious multidisciplinary volume surveys the science, forensics, politics, and ethics involved in responding to missing persons cases. International experts across the physical and social sciences offer data, case examples, and insights on best practices, new methods, and emerging specialties that may be employed in investigations. Topics such as secondary victimization, privacy issues, DNA identification, and the challenges of finding victims of war and genocide highlight the uncertainties and complexities surrounding these cases as well as possibilities for location and recovery. This diverse presentation will assist professionals in accessing new ideas, collaborating with colleagues, and handling missing persons cases with greater efficiency-and potentially greater certainty. Among the Handbook's topics: *A profile of missing persons: some key findings for police officers. *Missing persons investigations and identification: issues of scale, infrastructure, and political will. *Pregnancy and parenting among runaway and homeless young women. *Estimating the appearance of the missing: forensic age progression in the search for missing persons. *The use of trace evidence in missing persons investigations. *The Investigation of historic missing persons cases: genocide and "conflict time" human rights abuses. The depth and scope of its expertise make the Handbook of Missing Persons useful for criminal justice and forensic professionals, health care and mental health professionals, social scientists, legal professionals, policy leaders, community leaders, and military personnel, as well as for the general public.

In this revolutionary work, the author sets the stage for the science of
the 21st Century, pursuing an unprecedented synthesis of fields previously
considered unrelated. Beginning with simple classical concepts, he ends
with a complex multidisciplinary theory requiring a high level of
abstraction. The work progresses across the sciences in several
multidisciplinary directions: Mathematical logic, fundamental physics,
computer science and the theory of intelligence. Extraordinarily enough,
the author breaks new ground in all these fields.

In the field of
fundamental physics the author reaches the revolutionary conclusion that
physics can be viewed and studied as logic in a fundamental sense, as
compared with Einstein's view of physics as space-time geometry. This opens
new, exciting prospects for the study of fundamental interactions. A
formulation of logic in terms of matrix operators and logic vector spaces
allows the author to tackle for the first time the intractable problem of
cognition in a scientific manner. In the same way as the findings of
Heisenberg and Dirac in the 1930s provided a conceptual and mathematical
foundation for quantum physics, matrix operator logic supports an important
breakthrough in the study of the physics of the mind, which is interpreted
as a fractal of quantum mechanics. Introducing a concept of logic quantum
numbers, the author concludes that the problem of logic and the
intelligence code in general can be effectively formulated as eigenvalue
problems similar to those of theoretical physics. With this important leap
forward in the study of the mechanism of mind, the author concludes that
the latter cannot be fully understood either within classical or quantum
notions. A higher-order covariant theory is required to accommodate the
fundamental effect of high-level intelligence. The landmark results
obtained by the author will have implications and repercussions for the
very foundations of science as a whole. Moreover, Stern's Matrix Logic is
suitable for a broad spectrum of practical applications in contemporary
technologies.

In these accelerated times, our decisive and businesslike ways of thinking are unprepared for ambiguity, paradox, and sleeping on it." We assume that the quick-thinking "hare brain" will beat out the slower Intuition of the "tortoise mind." However, now research in cognitive science is changing this understanding of the human mind. It suggests that patience and confusion--rather than rigor and certainty--are the essential precursors of wisdom.

With a compelling argument that the mind works best when we trust our unconscious, or "undermind," psychologist Guy Claxton makes an appeal that we be less analytical and let our creativity have free rein. He also encourages reevaluation of society's obsession with results-oriented thinking and problem-solving under pressure. Packed with Interesting anecdotes, a dozen puzzles to test your reasoning, and the latest related research, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind is an Illuminating, uplifting, stimulating read that focuses on a new kind of well-being and cognition.

This collection weitten by leading figures in cognitive science includes their lively debates with Dartnall about his call for a new epistemology, an alternative to the standard representational story in cognitive science. Dartnall aims to show that new epistemology is already with us in some leading-edge models of human creativity. Such an epistemology steers a middle road between the representationism of classical cognitive science and a radical anti-representationism that denies the existence or importance of representations.

Dartnall, who debates contributors at each chapter's end, believes that creativity inheres--not only in big ticket items such as plays, poems, or sonatas--but in our ability to produce cognitive content at all, so that representations are the creative products of our knowledge, rather than its passive carriers.

Historical analysis reveals that perceptual theories and models are doomed to relatively short lives. The most popular contemporary theories in perceptual science do not have as wide an acceptance among researchers as do some of those in other sciences. To understand these difficulties, the authors of the present volume explore the conceptual and philosophical foundations of perceptual science. Based on logical analyses of various problems, theories, and models, they offer a number of reasons for the current weakness of perceptual explanations. New theoretical approaches are also proposed. At the end of each chapter, dicussants contribute to the conclusions by critically examining the authors' ideas and analyses.

In her new book Art and the Brain: Plasticity, Embodiment and the Unclosed Circle, Amy Ione offers a profound assessment of our ever-evolving view of the biological brain as it pertains to embodied human experience. She deftly takes the reader from Deep History into our current worldview by surveying the range of nascent responses to perception, thoughts and feelings that have bred paradigmatic changes and led to contemporary research modalities. Interweaving carefully chosen illustrations with the emerging ideas of brain function that define various time periods reinforces a multidisciplinary framework connecting neurological research, theories of mind, art investigations, and intergenerational cultural practices. The book will serve as a foundation for future investigations of neuroscience, art, and the humanities.

Thau maintains that our conception of consciousness begins with and depends upon a few fundamental errors. He elucidates these errors by discussing three important philosophical puzzles--Spectrum Inversion, Frege's Puzzle, and Black-and-White Mary -- each of which concerns some aspect of either consciousness or cognition. He argues that it has gone unnoticed that each of these puzzles presents the very same problem and, in bringing this commonality to light, the errors in our natural conception of consciousness and cognition are also revealed.

Consciousness and the relation between mind and brain are topics of contentious debate, and increasing interest amongst both academics and students of psychology. In this text, Lancaster takes a refreshingly balanced look at consciousness, bringing in approaches from neuroscience, cognitive science, depth psychology, philosophy and mysticism. With a distinctive "transpersonal" orientation, this text will be an invaluable authoritative overview of this subject, integrating scholarship and research from diverse areas.