|
Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology
Early emotional development, emotional regulation, and the links
between emotion and social or cognitive functioning in atypically
developing children have not received much attention. This lack is
due in part to the priorities given to the educational and
therapeutic needs of these children. Yet an understanding of the
basic emotional processes in children with atypical development can
only serve to promote more effective strategies for teaching and
intervening in the lives of these children and their families and
may contribute to our understanding of basic emotional processes as
well.
When referring to "emotions," the editors mean some complex set of
processes or abilities, whether or not the topic is normal or
atypical development. Specifically, they use the term "emotion" to
refer to at least three things -- emotional expressions, emotional
states, and emotional experiences. The focus of this volume, these
three aspects of emotional life are affected by socialization
practices, maturational change, and individual biological
differences including, in this case, differences in children as a
function of disability. Contributors examine the development of
emotions in children with organic or psychological disorders as
well as those in compromised social contexts making this volume of
prime importance to developmental, clinical, and social
psychologists, educators, and child mental health experts.
Signal detection theory--as developed in electrical engineering and
based on statistical decision theory--was first applied to human
sensory discrimination 40 years ago. The theoretical intent was to
provide a valid model of the discrimination process; the
methodological intent was to provide reliable measures of
discrimination acuity in specific sensory tasks. An analytic method
of detection theory, called the relative operating characteristic
(ROC), can isolate the effect of the placement of the decision
criterion, which may be variable and idiosyncratic, so that a pure
measure of intrinsic discrimination acuity is obtained. For the
past 20 years, ROC analysis has also been used to measure the
discrimination acuity or inherent accuracy of a broad range of
practical diagnostic systems. It was widely adopted by
methodologists in the field of information retrieval, is
increasingly used in weather forecasting, and is the generally
preferred method in clinical medicine, primarily in radiology. This
book attends to both themes, ROC analysis in the psychology
laboratory and in practical diagnostic settings, and to their
essential unity.
The focus of this book is on "detection" and "recognition" as
fundamental tasks that underlie most complex behaviors. As defined
here, they serve to distinguish between two alternative, confusable
stimulus categories, which may be perceptual or cognitive
categories in the psychology laboratory, or different states of the
world in practical diagnostic tasks.
This book on signal detection theory in psychology was written by
one of the developers of the theory, who co-authored with D.M.
Green the classic work published in this area in 1966 (reprinted in
1974 and 1988). This volume reviews the history of the theory in
engineering, statistics, and psychology, leading to the separate
measurement of the two independent factors in all discrimination
tasks, discrimination acuity and decision criterion. It extends the
previous book to show how in several areas of psychology--in
vigilance and memory--what had been thought to be discrimination
effects were, in reality, effects of a changing criterion.
The book shows that data plotted in terms of the relative
operating characteristic have essentially the same form across the
wide range of discrimination tasks in psychology. It develops the
implications of this ROC form for measures of discrimination
acuity, pointing up the valid ones and identifying several common,
but invalid, ones. The area under the binormal ROC is seen to be
supported by the data; the popular measures "d'" and percent
correct are not. An appendix describes the best, current programs
for fitting ROCs and estimating their parameters, indices, and
standard errors.
The application of ROC analysis to diagnostic tasks is also
described. Diagnostic accuracy in a wide range of tasks can be
expressed in terms of the ROC area index. Choosing the appropriate
decision criterion for a given diagnostic setting--rather than
considering some single criterion to be natural and fixed--has a
major impact on the efficacy of a diagnostic process or system.
Illustrated here by separate chapters are diagnostic systems in
radiology, information retrieval, aptitude testing, survey
research, and environments in which imminent dangerous conditions
must be detected. Data from weather forecasting, blood testing, and
polygraph lie detection are also reported. One of these chapters
describes a general approach to enhancing the accuracy of
diagnostic systems.
Recently, research on the ways in which goals, affect, and
self-regulation influence one another has enjoyed an upsurge. New
findings are being published and new theories are being developed
to integrate these findings. This volume reports on the latest of
this work, including a substantial amount of data and theory that
has not yet been published. Emanating from a conference exploring
affect as both a cause and effect in various social contexts, this
book examines some of the complex and reciprocal relationships
among goals, self structures, feelings, thoughts, and behavior. The
chapters address:
*the effects of intrinsic versus extrinsic goals;
*the different effects of approach versus avoidance goals;
*the role of awareness in goal pursuit and affective states;
*the meaning of affective states in relation to goal
attainment;
*the impact of hedonistic concerns as motivational factors;
*how people regulate their moods; and
*the role of the self in affective experiences.
The recent evolution of western societies has been characterized by
an increasing emphasis on information and communication. As the
amount of available information increases, however, the user --
worker, student, citizen -- faces a new problem: selecting and
accessing relevant information. More than ever it is crucial to
find efficient ways for users to interact with information systems
in a way that prevents them from being overwhelmed or simply
missing their targets. As a result, hypertext systems have been
developed as a means of facilitating the interactions between
readers and text. In hypertext, information is organized as a
network in which nodes are text chunks (e.g., lists of items,
paragraphs, pages) and links are relationships between the nodes
(e.g., semantic associations, expansions, definitions, examples --
virtually any kind of relation that can be imagined between two
text passages). Unfortunately, the many ways in which these
hypertext interfaces can be designed has caused a complexity that
extends far beyond the processing abilities of regular users.
Therefore, it has become widely recognized that a more rational
approach based on a thorough analysis of information users' needs,
capacities, capabilities, and skills is needed. This volume seeks
to meet that need.
From a user-centered perspective -- between systems and users --
this volume presents theoretical and empirical research on the
cognitive processes involved in using hypertext. In so doing, it
illustrates three main approaches to the design of hypertext
systems:
*cognitive, which examines how users process multilayered
hypertext structures;
*ergonomical, which explores how users interact with the design
characteristics of hardware and software; and
*educational, which studies the learning objectives, frequency and
duration of hypertext sessions, type of reading activity, and the
user's learning characteristics.
This volume also tries to provide answers for the questions that
have plagued hypertext research:
*What is hypertext good for?
*Who is hypertext good for?
*If it is useful for learning and instruction, then what type?
*What particular cognitive skills are needed to interact
successfully with a hypertext system? Anyone interested in the
fields of computer science, linguistics, psychology, education, and
graphic design will find this volume intriguing, informative, and a
definitive starting point for future research in the field of
hypertext.
Focusing on the principles and applications of chaotic thinking,
this text seeks to promote a more general understanding and
acceptance of this cognitive style. It may help people deal more
effectively with chaotic situations, such as economic crises,
career changes, and relationship skills.
Cognitive interference refers to unwanted, often disturbing
thoughts which intrude on a person's life. This text examines the
effects of this thinking on behaviour, particularly how stress can
distort cognition and performance and the role it plays in social
maladjustment and slow learning.
Recent concerns with the evaluation of argumentation in informal
logic and speech communication center around nondemonstrative
arguments that lead to tentative or defeasible conclusions based on
a balance of considerations. Such arguments do not appear to have
structures of the kind traditionally identified with deductive and
inductive reasoning, but are extremely common and are often called
"plausible" or "presumptive," meaning that they are only
provisionally acceptable even when they are correct. How is one to
judge, by some clearly defined standard, whether such arguments are
correct or not in a given instance? The answer lies in what are
called argumentation schemes -- forms of argument (structures of
inference) that enable one to identify and evaluate common types of
argumentation in everyday discourse.
This book identifies 25 argumentation schemes for presumptive
reasoning and matches a set of critical questions to each. These
two elements -- the scheme and the questions -- are then used to
evaluate a given argument in a particular case in relation to a
context of dialogue in which the argument occurred.
In recent writings on argumentation, there is a good deal of
stress placed on how important argumentation schemes are in any
attempt to evaluate common arguments in everyday reasoning as
correct or fallacious, acceptable or questionable. However, the
problem is that the literature thus far has not produced a precise
and user-friendly enough analysis of the structures of the
argumentation schemes themselves, nor have any of the documented
accounts been as helpful, accessible, or systematic as they could
be, especially in relation to presumptive reasoning. This book
solves the problem by presenting the most common presumptive
schemes in an orderly and clear way that makes them explicit and
useful as precisely defined structures. As such, it will be an
indispensable tool for researchers, students, and teachers in the
areas of critical thinking, argumentation, speech communication,
informal logic, and discourse analysis.
Introduced one hundred years ago, film has since become part of our
lives. For the past century, however, the experience offered by
fiction films has remained a mystery. Questions such as why adult
viewers cry and shiver, and why they care at all about fictional
characters -- while aware that they contemplate an entirely staged
scene -- are still unresolved. In addition, it is unknown why
spectators find some film experiences entertaining that have a
clearly aversive nature outside the cinema. These and other
questions make the psychological status of "emotions" allegedly
induced by the fiction film highly problematic.
Earlier attempts to answer these questions have been limited to a
few genre studies. In recent years, film criticism and the theory
of film structure have made use of psychoanalytic concepts which
have proven insufficient in accounting for the diversity of film
induced affect. In contrast, academic psychology -- during the
century of its existence -- has made extensive study of emotional
responses provoked by viewing fiction film, but has taken the role
of film as a natural stimulus completely for granted. The present
volume bridges the gap between critical theories of film on the one
hand, and recent psychological theory and research of human emotion
on the other, in an attempt to explain the emotions provoked by
fiction film.
This book integrates insights on the narrative structure of
fiction film including its themes, plot structure, and characters
with recent knowledge on the cognitive processing of natural
events, and narrative and person information. It develops a
theoretical framework for systematically describing emotion in the
film viewer. The question whether or not film produces genuine
emotion is answered by comparing affect in the viewer with emotion
in the real world experienced by persons witnessing events that
have personal significance to them. Current understanding of the
psychology of emotions provides the basis for identifying critical
features of the fiction film that trigger the general emotion
system. Individual emotions are classified according to their
position in the affect structure of a film -- a larger system of
emotions produced by one particular film as a whole. Along the way,
a series of problematic issues is dealt with, notably the "reality"
of the emotional stimulus in film, the "identification" of the
viewer with protagonists on screen, and the necessity of the
viewer's cooperation in arriving at a genuine emotion. Finally, it
is argued that film-produced emotions are genuine emotions in
response to an artificial stimulus. Film can be regarded as a
fine-tuned machine for a continuous stream of emotions that are
entertaining after all.
The work paves the way for understanding and, in principle,
predicting emotions in the film viewer using existing psychological
instruments of investigation. Dealing with the problems of
film-induced affect and rendering them accessible to formal
modeling and experimental method serves a wider interest of
understanding aesthetic emotion -- the feelings that man-made
products, and especially works of art, can evoke in the
beholder.
Thirty-three of the top scholars in this fast moving domain present
a picture of work at the cusp in social psychology -- work that
deals with cognition and affect in close relationships. The present
volume contains a wealth of research findings and influential
theoretical accounts that spring as much from indigenous work in
the close relationship field as from purebred social cognition. The
chapters introduce theories and research programs concerned with
the role of individual and couple differences in close relationship
knowledge structures. They deal with the role of emotion and affect
in close relationships. And they discuss the function of cognition
and knowledge structures in relation to the developmental course of
close relationships. Each section is accompanied by a critical
review written by an expert in the field.
This volume is a must for any close relationship scholar
interested in the latest research and theorizing about close
relationships that adopt a social psychological perspective. It
will also be of interest to scholars and students working in
clinical psychology, social cognition, communication, individual
differences, and family studies.
What is text understanding?
It is the dynamic process of constructing coherent representations
and inferences at multiple levels of text and context, within the
bottleneck of a limited-capacity working memory.
The field of text and discourse has advanced to the point where
researchers have developed sophisticated models of comprehension,
and identified the particular assumptions that underlie
comprehension mechanisms in precise analytical or mathematical
detail. The models offer "a priori" predictions about thought and
behavior, not merely "ad hoc" descriptions of data. Indeed, the
field has evolved to a mature science.
The contributors to this volume collectively cover the major
models of comprehension in the field of text and discourse. Other
books are either narrow -- covering only a single theoretical
framework -- or do not focus on systematic modeling efforts. In
addition, this book focuses on deep levels of understanding rather
than language codes, syntax, and other shallower levels of text
analysis. As such, it provides readers with up-to-date information
on current psychological models specified in quantitative or
analytical detail.
What is the basis of our ability to assign meanings to words or to
objects? Such questions have, until recently, been regarded as
lying within the province of philosophy and linguistics rather than
psychology. However, recent advances in psychology and
neuropsychology have led to the development of a scientific
approach to analysing the cognitive bases of semantic knowledge and
semantic representations. Indeed, theory and data on the
organisation and structure of semantic knowledge have now become
central and hotly debated topics in contemporary psychology.
This special issue of Memory brings together a series of papers
from established laboratories that are at the forefront of semantic
memory research. The collection includes papers presenting
theoretical overviews of the field as well as papers containing new
experimental findings. A variety of approaches to the problems of
analysing semantic knowledge and semantic representations are
included in this volume. For example, experimental studies of
normal subjects are included together with neuropsychological
investigations of patients with impaired semantic memory and
computational models of the representation of knowledge in
normality and disease. This collection will therefore be essential
reading for researchers and others who are interested in memory
function. It will also be of interest to cognitive scientists,
linguists, philosophers and others who have puzzled over the many
complex and central questions that probe the roots of our ability
to understand meaning.
Memory has long been ignored by rhetoricians because the written
word has made memorization virtually obsolete. Recently however, as
part of a revival of interest in classical rhetoric, scholars have
begun to realize that memory offers vast possibilities for today's
writers. Synthesizing research from rhetoric, psychology,
philosophy, and literary and composition studies, this volume
brings together many historical and contemporary theories of
memory. Yet its focus is clear: memory is a generator of knowledge
and a creative force which deserves attention at the beginning of
and throughout the writing process.
This volume emphasizes the importance of recognizing memory's
powers in an age in which mass media influence us all and
electronic communication changes the way we think and write. It
also addresses the importance of the individual memory and voice in
an age which promotes conformity. Written in a strong, lively
personal manner, the book covers a great deal of scholarly
material. It is never overbearing, and the extensive bibliography
offers rich vistas for further study.
The usual method for studying mental processes entails taking words
in linguistics -- or concepts in logic -- and establishing the
connections and relationships between them. Thus, the traditional
approach to semantic problems -- those of meaning and understanding
-- is through language. Most researchers agree that thought and
language are generated by deep-seated semantic structures
determined by the structure of the brain. Until now, however, all
attempts at constructing semantic models have been made on the
basis of linguistic material alone, without taking brain structure
into account. Analysis of these models shows them to be as
inadequate as those based on the method of the black box.
This book approaches the problem of the organization of higher
psychological functions a different way -- by analyzing the
functional organization of the neural structures that gradually
form universal categories from "raw" sensory material. At the
higher levels of the brain's operation, these universals correspond
to the basic categories of thought and language. The visual system
provides rewarding material for such an approach, both because it
is relatively well researched and because it is the main source of
sensory information in humans. With this in mind, this monograph
examines the whole process of the transformation and description --
the coding of visual information. The most important aspect of this
process is the transition from the description of visual space to
the description of individual objects and the relationships between
them. This transition is made possible by the existence in the
visual system of various mechanisms that developed during evolution
as a result of environmental influences.
Written for a wide circle of investigators in disciplines
associated with different aspects of the functioning of the brain
-- physiologists and psychologists -- this book is also of
importance to engineers and mathematicians working on the problems
of artificial intelligence, and linguists and philosophers
interested in the deep structures that form the universals of
thought and language.
The power of odors to unlock human memory is celebrated in
literature and anecdote, but poorly documented by science. Odors --
perhaps more than other stimuli -- are widely believed to evoke
vivid and complex past experiences easily. Yet in contrast to the
frequency with which odors are thought to evoke memories of the
past, scientific evidence is thus far scant.
For years, voluminous data have been collected on odor
sensitivity, whereas relatively few studies exist on memory for
odors per se. Moreover, the memory data that do exist are thus far
only poorly integrated with the most modern attitudes on human
memory. The major goal of this volume is to point the way toward a
better state of affairs, one in which the study of odor memory is
legitimatized as a proper specialization and is informed by the
most promising ideas in the mainstream study of memory. This volume
explores three tendencies in modern memory theory that have not yet
sufficiently penetrated the odor-memory work: memory coding, memory
and knowledge, and implicit and explicit memory.
To define better techniques of mathematics education, this book
combines a knowledge of cognitive science with mathematics
curriculum theory and research. The concept of the human reasoning
process has been changed fundamentally by cognitive science in the
last two decades. The role of memory retrieval, domain-specific and
domain-general skills, analogy, and mental models is better
understood now than previously. The authors believe that cognitive
science provides the most accurate account thus far of the actual
processes that people use in mathematics and offers the best
potential for genuine increases in efficiency. As such, they
suggest that a cognitive science approach enables constructivist
ideas to be analyzed and further developed in the search for
greater understanding of children's mathematical learning.
Not simply an application of cognitive science, however, this book
provides a new perspective on mathematics education by examining
the nature of mathematical concepts and processes, how and why they
are taught, why certain approaches appear more effective than
others, and how children might be assisted to become more
mathematically powerful. The authors use recent theories of analogy
and knowledge representation -- combined with research on teaching
practice -- to find ways of helping children form links and
correspondences between different concepts, so as to overcome
problems associated with fragmented knowledge. In so doing, they
have capitalized on new insights into the values and limitations of
using concrete teaching aids which can be analyzed in terms of
analogy theory.
In addition to addressing the role of understanding, the authors
have analyzed skill acquisition models in terms of their
implications for the development of mathematical competence. They
place strong emphasis on the development of students' mathematical
reasoning and problem solving skills to promote flexible use of
knowledge. The book further demonstrates how children have a number
of general problem solving skills at their disposal which they can
apply independently to the solution of novel problems, resulting in
the enhancement of their mathematical knowledge.
This book tries to answer the question posed by Minsky at the
beginning of "The Society of Mind: " "to explain the mind, we have
to show how minds are built from mindless stuff, from parts that
are much smaller and simpler than anything we'd considered smart."
The author believes that cognition should not be rooted in innate
rules and primitives, but rather grounded in human memory. More
specifically, he suggests viewing linguistic comprehension as a
time-constrained process -- a race for building an interpretation
in short term memory.
After reviewing existing psychological and computational
approaches to text understanding and concluding that they generally
rely on self-validating primitives, the author abandons this
objectivist and normative approach to meaning and develops a set of
requirements for a grounded cognitive architecture. He then goes on
to explain how this architecture must avoid all epistemological
commitments, be tractable both with respect to space and time, and,
most importantly, account for the diachronic and non-deterministic
nature of comprehension. In other words, a text may or may not lead
to an interpretation for a specific reader, and may be associated
with several interpretations over time by one reader.
Throughout the remainder of the book, the author demonstrates that
rules for all major facets of comprehension -- syntax, reference
resolution, quantification, lexical and structural disambiguation,
inference and subject matter -- can be expressed in terms of the
simple mechanistic computing elements of a massively parallel
network modeling memory. These elements, called knowledge units,
work in a limited amount of time and have the ability not only to
recognize but also to build the structures that make up an
interpretation.
Designed as a main text for graduate courses, this volume is
essential to the fields of cognitive science, artificial
intelligence, memory modeling, text understanding, computational
linguistics and natural language understanding. Other areas of
application are schema-matching, hermeneutics, local connectionism,
and text linguistics. With its extensive bibliography, the book is
also valuable as supplemental reading for introductory
undergraduate courses in cognitive science and computational
linguistics.
This volume presents a state-of-the-science review of the most
promising current European research -- and its historic roots of
research -- on complex problem solving (CPS) in Europe. It is an
attempt to close the knowledge gap among American scholars
regarding the European approach to understanding CPS. Although most
of the American researchers are well aware of the fact that CPS has
been a very active research area in Europe for quite some time,
they do not know any specifics about even the most important
research. Part of the reason for this lack of knowledge is
undoubtedly the fact that European researchers -- for the most part
-- have been rather reluctant to publish their work in
English-language journals.
The book concentrates on European research because the basic
approach European scholars have taken to studying CPS is very
different from one taken by North American researchers.
Traditionally, American scholars have been studying CPS in
"natural" domains -- physics, reading, writing, and chess playing
-- concentrating primarily on exploring novice-expert differences
and the acquisition of a complex skill. European scholars, in
contrast, have been primarily concerned with problem solving
behavior in artificially generated, mostly computerized, complex
systems. While the American approach has the advantage of high
external validity, the European approach has the advantage of
system variables that can be systematically manipulated to reveal
the effects of system parameters on CPS behavior. The two
approaches are thus best viewed as complementing each other.
This volume contains contributions from four European countries --
Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Germany. As such, it
accurately represents the bulk of empirical research on CPS which
has been conducted in Europe. An international cooperation started
two years ago with the goal of bringing the European research on
complex problem solving to the awareness of American scholars. A
direct result of that effort, the contributions to this book are
both informative and comprehensive.
This text covers safety topics related to aging. Featuring a
toolkit including checklists and workbook elements to outline what
tasks need to be conducted, and in what order, the book aims to
identify potential risks and avoid potential pitfalls. It discusses
fire safety, food safety, occupational safety, personal emergency
response systems (PERS), fall detection devices, remote patient
monitoring devices, electronic medication ordering and dispensing,
home-based activity monitoring, legal safety tools, medical safety
concerns, and tools, falls prevention and vertigo. The text will
appeal to professionals and graduate students in the fields of
ergonomics, human factors, occupational health, and safety.
Unlike the competing texts, which focus on luxury branding and
marketing, this book considers luxury from a strategic
decision-making, creative and competitive perspective; Each chapter
is illustrated by cases and examples from well-known international
luxury firms, as well as chapter objectives, summaries, and
reflective questions; Provides a framework to understand and assess
value creation when creativity is relevant
During the past two or three decades, research in cognitive science
and psychology has yielded an improved understanding of the
fundamental psychological nature of knowledge and cognitive skills
that psychological testing attempts to measure. These theories have
reached sufficient maturity, making it reasonable to look upon them
to provide a sound theoretical foundation for assessment,
particulary for the content of assessments. This fact, combined
with much discontentedness over current testing practices, has
inspired efforts to bring testing and cognitive theory together to
create a new theoretical framework for psychological testing -- a
framework developed for diagnosing learners' differences rather
than for ranking learners based on their differences.
This volume presents some initial accomplishments in the effort to
bring testing and cognitive theory together. Contributors originate
from both of the relevant research communities -- cognitive
research and psychometric theory. Some represent collaborations
between representatives of the two communities; others are efforts
to reach out in the direction of the other community. Taking
fundamentally different forms, psychometric test theory assumes
that knowledge can be represented in terms of one or at most a few
dimensions, whereas modern cognitive theory typically represents
knowledge in networks -- either networks of conceptual
relationships or the transition networks of production systems.
Cognitively diagnostic assessment is a new enterprise and it is
evident that many challenging problems remain to be addressed.
Still, it is already possible to develop highly productive
interactions between assessment and instruction in both automated
tutoring systems and more conventional classrooms. The editors hope
that the chapters presented here show how the reform of assessment
can take a rigorous path.
Most research on children's lexical development has focused on
their acquisition of names for concrete objects. This is the first
edited volume to focus specifically on how children acquire their
early verbs. Verbs are an especially important part of the early
lexicon because of the role they play in children's emerging
grammatical competence. The contributors to this book investigate:
* children's earliest words for actions and events and the
cognitive structures that might underlie them,
* the possibility that the basic principles of word learning which
apply in the case of nouns might also apply in the case of verbs,
and
the role of linguistic context, especially argument structure, in
the acquisition of verbs.
A central theme in many of the chapters is the comparison of the
processes of noun and verb learning. Several contributors make
provocative suggestions for constructing theories of lexical
development that encompass the full range of lexical items that
children learn and use.
How do young children bridge the gap between "writing" a story with
pictures and writing with words? How children learn to use written
words to tell a story is a topic important to both cognitive
development and early literacy instruction. Using the theoretical
framework developed by Vygotsky, the behavior of a group of
prekindergarten children as they author two consecutive pieces of
writing is analyzed. The children tell their stories at first with
spoken words and pictures. As they discuss their work-in-progress
in public conferences, they discover how to build on and combine
existing skills to produce a new skill -- telling stories with
written words.
Current descriptive and theoretical perspectives on beginning
writing are presented in this volume, with a particular focus on
Vygotsky's concept of the "zone of proximal development," a period
of sensitivity in which learning advances. The proposed mechanism
of change is "verbal mediation" -- talk among peers and teachers as
they discuss work-in-progress -- which moves the children through
the zone of proximal development.
An open, whole-language approach to literacy instruction makes the
classroom in this book an ideal arena in which to observe verbal
mediation in operation. Children are free to question, criticize
and argue; and in the process they collectively advance their
developing ability to use written language.
The work is unique in that the rich and comprehensive data record
is reproduced in its entirety. More than 400 illustrations of the
children's products -- two "books" apiece, pictured before and
after the children's revisions -- are included, along with
transcripts of the conferences about each of the pages, permitting
direct observation of the effects of verbal mediation. This dynamic
study documents change during a period of time when specific
learning is occurring, and provides strong support for the value
and power of Vygotsky's theoretical framework.
This volume is a direct result of an international conference that
brought together a number of scholars from Europe and the United
States to discuss their ideas and research about cognitive and
instructional processes in history and the social sciences. As
such, it fills a major gap in the study of how people learn and
reason in the context of particular subject matter domains and how
instruction can be improved in order to facilitate better learning
and reasoning. Previous cognitive work on subject matter learning
has been focused primarily upon mathematics and physics; the
present effort provides the first such venture examining the
history and social science domains from a cognitive perspective.
The different sections of the book cover topics related to
comprehension, learning, and instruction of history and the social
sciences, including:
*the development of some social sciences concepts,
*the teaching of social sciences -- problems and questions arising
from this cognitive perspective of learning,
*the comprehension and learning from historical texts,
*how people and students understand historical causality and
provide explanations of historical events, and
*the deduction processes involved in reasoning about social
sciences contents.
This volume will be useful for primary and secondary school
teachers and for cognitive and instructional researchers interested
in problem solving and reasoning, text comprehension,
domain-specific knowledge acquisition and concept
development.
This book provides the latest information about the development of
intersensory perception -- a topic which has recently begun to
receive a great deal of attention from researchers studying the
general problem of perceptual development. This interest was
inspired after the realization that unimodal perception of sensory
information is only the first stage of perceptual processing. Under
normal conditions, an organism is faced with multiple, multisensory
sources of information and its task is to either select a single
relevant source of information or select several sources of
information and integrate them. In general, perception and action
on the basis of multiple sources of information is more efficient
and effective. Before greater efficiency and effectiveness can be
achieved, however, the organism must be able to integrate the
multiple sources of information. By doing so, the organism can then
achieve a coherent and unified percept of the world.
The various chapters in this book examine the developmental
origins of intersensory perceptual capacities by presenting the
latest research on the development of intersensory perceptual
skills in a variety of different species. By adopting a comparative
approach to this problem, this volume as a whole helps uncover
similarities as well as differences in the mechanisms underlying
the development of intersensory integration. In addition, it shows
that there is no longer any doubt that intersensory interactions
occur right from the beginning of the developmental process, that
the nature of these intersensory interactions changes as
development progresses, and that early experience contributes in
important ways to these changes.
|
|