Decision making is a complex phenomenon which normally is deeply integrated into social life. At the same time the decision making process often gives the decision maker an opportunity for conscious planning and for taking a reflective stance with respect to the action considered. This suggests that decision making allows creative solutions with a potential to change the course of events both on an individual and a collective level. Given these considerations, we argue that in order to more fully understand decision making the perspectives of different disciplines are needed. In this volume we have attempted to draw together contributions that would provide a broad view of decision making. Much work has been carried out in the writing and editing of this volume. First of all we would like to thank the contributors for their efforts in producing interesting and important texts and for their patience in the editorial process. Each chapter was edited by two or three reviewers. These reviewers are listed on a separate page in this book. Our heartfelt thanks go to them for their time and for their incisive and constructive reviews! We are also grateful to the publishing editors at Kluwer Academic Publishers, Christiane Roll and Dorien Francissen, who have been generous with their encouragement and patience throughout the editorial process.

The contributions to this volume are concerned with perceptual learning in humans and machines. As people gain experience in the world, their perceptual abilities are often times radically transformed. Children organize their perceptual world differently from adults, and experts often have unique perceptual skills within their domain of expertise.;In a variety of ways, the contributors to this volume argue that perceptual abilities, rather than being fixed and stable, are flexible and influenced by tasks, needs and environment. This book focuses on recent research techniques for exploring the mechanisms that drive perceptual learning in humans. It creates a synthesis between empirical research and formal modelling. Collectively, the contributions reflect an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of perceptual learning, describing research from developmental psychology, adult perception, language acquisition, expert/novice differences, computational modelling and neuroscience.

An engaging account of the science of dreaming. Written by a leading sleep researcher and a professional dream artist. Makes the biological, psychological, personal, and cultural causes of dreaming accessible. Surveys current theories of the function and meaning (or lack thereof) of dreams. Covers all current scientific work on dreaming, from what happens in the brain when we dream to how dream content relates to our waking life experiences * Each chapter tackles a different type of dream, illustrated through a scientific overview and a professional colour painting

We delight in using our eyes, particularly when puzzling over pictures. Art and illusionists is a celebration of pictures and the multiple modes of manipulating them to produce illusory worlds on flat surfaces. This has proved fascinating to humankind since the dawning of depiction. Art and illusionists is also a celebration of the ways we see pictures, and of our ability to distil meaning from arrays of contours and colours. Pictures are not only a source of fascination for artists, who produce them, but also for scientists, who analyse the perceptual effects they induce. Illusions provide the glue to cement the art and science of vision. Painters plumb the art of observation itself whereas scientists peer into the processes of perception. Both visual artists and scientists have produced patterns that perplex our perceptions and present us with puzzles that we are pleased to peruse. Art and illusionists presents these two poles of pictorial representation as well as presenting novel 'perceptual portraits' of the artists and scientists who have augmented the art of illusion. The reader can experience the paradoxes of pictures as well as producing their own by using the stereoscopic glasses enclosed and the transparent overlay for making dynamic moire patterns.

"There are words that are so familiar they obscure rather than illuminate the thing they mean, and 'learning' is such a word. It seems so ordinary, everyone does it. Actually it's more of a black box, which Dehaene cracks open to reveal the awesome secrets within."--The New York Times Book Review An illuminating dive into the latest science on our brain's remarkable learning abilities and the potential of the machines we program to imitate them The human brain is an extraordinary learning machine. Its ability to reprogram itself is unparalleled, and it remains the best source of inspiration for recent developments in artificial intelligence. But how do we learn? What innate biological foundations underlie our ability to acquire new information, and what principles modulate their efficiency? In How We Learn, Stanislas Dehaene finds the boundary of computer science, neurobiology, and cognitive psychology to explain how learning really works and how to make the best use of the brain's learning algorithms in our schools and universities, as well as in everyday life and at any age.

In recent years, a booming research interest has been observed in linking basic cognitive processes with a variety of social and clinical phenomena. Evidence comes from the increasing popularity of psychological paradigms such as social cognition, cognitive psychopathology or cognitive aging. What links those paradigms is their special focus on explaining cognitive phenomena by use of the concept of mental resources. Immediate reasons for such a focus are found in the growing emphasis on understanding everyday dynamics of thinking and acting within a complex world, as well as within personal constraints. Obviously, our current goals and choice of activities constrain and influence our reasoning as well as the processes of input to and retrieval from memory. Situational demands will act to the same effect, and the interplay between both, internal and external constraints, makes apparent a first and straightforward relevance of the resource notion in action-oriented cognitive research. For example, person perception is a dynamic process depending on what my goals in perception are, what the perceiving situation is that I find myself in, and how complex the target characteristics are. In fact, the amount of resources spent in this process may be reflected in its speed, the quality of the perceptual or mnemonic trace which is being created, or the kind of social or non-social behavior that can be supported.

Converging evidence from disciplines including sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and human biology forces us to adopt a new idea of what it means to be a human. As cherished concepts such as free will, naive realism, humans as creation's crowning glory fall and our moral roots in ape group dynamics become clearer, we have to take leave of many concepts that have been central to defining our humanness. What emerges is a new human, the homo novus, a human being without illusions. Leading authors from many different fields explore these issues by addressing a range of illusions and providing evidence for the need, despite considerable reluctance, to relinquish some of our most cherished ideas about ourselves.

Originally published in English in 1976, the book draws on and extends our knowledge of the process of learning. The subject of the study is the general stage in a child's development that comes between his successful performance of an activity without knowing how he did it - that is, what he had to do in order to succeed - and the times when he becomes aware of what went into that action. The book reports the results of experiments conducted at the Centre of Genetic Epistemology. Children, ranging in age between four and adolescence, were asked to perform such tasks as walking on all fours, playing tiddlywinks, building a ramp for a toy car. They were then asked to explain how they had performed the task, and in some cases, to instruct the interviewer. Their answers show a number of surprising inaccuracies in the child's ability to grasp the nature of what he has done. Taking a broad view of his results, Piaget shows that they reveal several stages in the gradual development of the child's conceptualization of his actions. In analysing each stage, Piaget argues that the child's concept of his own action cannot be considered a simple matter of 'enlightenment', but must actively be reconstructed from his experience. This view has always been at the core of Piaget's work, and a new area of the child's mental world is here given definitive treatment.

This volume explores the strengths and opportunities of old age as these are manifested by the accomplishments of aging artists, late artistic works, and elderly arts audiences. It critically examines the psychology of creativity, cognitive development, and gerontology, and will be of interest to a wide range of professionals and students in these fields.

Exploring the creative dimensions of memory and remembering, Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering tackle some of the key questions facing the emergent field of memory studies, including the nature of the relationship between memory and experience and between individual and collective memory. The most crucial relationship examined is one which has previously been largely ignored: the relationship between memory and imagination. The book argues for the importance of bringing imagination into the purview of memory studies and introduces the key concept of the mnemonic imagination as a tool for demonstrating the mutual interaction of memory and imagination in our everyday practices and processes of making sense of experience. Showing how the mnemonic imagination works in various aspects of personal life and popular culture, the authors address diverse topics such as the commercial exploitation of nostalgia and the remembering of traumatic and painful pasts.

This cognitive ethnography examines how scientists create meaning about biological phenomena through experimental practices in the laboratory, offering a frontline perspective on how new insights come to life. An exercise in the anthropology of knowledge, this story follows a community of biologists in Western Norway in their quest to build a novel experimental system for research on Lepeoptheirus salmonis, a parasite that has become a major pest in salmon aquaculture. The book offers a window on the making of this material culture of science, and how biological phenomena and their representations are skillfully transformed and made meaningful within a rich cognitive ecology. Conventional accounts of experiments see their purpose as mainly auxiliary, as handmaidens to theory. By looking closely at experimental activities and their materiality, this book shows how experimentation contributes to knowledge production through a broader set of epistemic actions.In drawing on a combination of approaches from anthropology and cognitive science, it offers a unique contribution to the fields of cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, science and technology studies and the philosophy of science.

Consciousness is a perennial source of mystification in the philosophy of mind: how can processes in the brain amount to conscious experiences? Robert Kirk uses the notion of `raw feeling' to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ourselves as subjects of experience; he argues that there is no need for recourse to dualism or private mental objects. The task is to understand how the truth about raw feeling could be strictly implied by narrowly physical truths. Kirk's explanation turns on an account of what it is to be a subject of conscious perceptual experience. He offers penetrating analyses of the problems of consciousness and suggests novel solutions which, unlike their rivals, can be accepted without gritting one's teeth. His sustained defence of non-reductive physicalism shows that we need not abandon hope of finding a solution to the mind-body problem.

This series includes monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information, and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope spans the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental powers of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and computer science. While primary emphasis is placed upon theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental, and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. This multi-authored volume provides investigations that fall into three broad areas of inquiry. In Part I, Antti Revonsuo reviews and evaluates contem porary discussions of the nature of consciousness. In Part II, Matti Kamppinen explores methodological issues, distinguishing between "intentional" and "structural" explanations. In Part III, Seppo Sajama and Simo Vihjanen consider whether humans ever have direct access to reality (in Section A), while Matti Kamppinen and Antti Revonsuo explore the conse quences of the claim that our knowledge of reality is conceptually mediated (in Section B). These studies combine to provide a stimulating exploration of cognitive science that should appeal to students and to scholars alike. J.H.F. vii PREFACE BY THE EDITOR The purpose of the book is to illustrate how empirical and conceptual problems interact in modem cognitive science. We argue that several topics discussed in contemporary research have long historical roots in philosophy."

This exciting new work argues for the exploration of drama as a conduit to deep emotional learning that has the ability to change the somatic identity of performers and audiences alike. Rokotnitz suggests that the preference for reciprocity exhibited by human physiological systems also extends into psychological and cognitive processes. Modeling her epistemological inquiry upon the paradigms instantiated by our biological architecture, she argues that effective knowledge acquisition and interpersonal communication rely on the ability to learn from and to trust in our bodies. Focusing on four plays by William Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, Timberlake Wertenbaker, and Moises Kaufman, each chapter of the book considers a different dramatic genre, historical period, philosophical context, and performance strategy, and traces in each the crucial and defining influence of bodily presence in establishing trust relations and moral accountability.

Originally published in 1969, Intelligence and Cultural Environment looks at the concept of intelligence and the factors influencing the mental development of children, including health and nutrition, as well as child-rearing practices. It goes on to discuss the application of intelligence tests in non-Western countries and includes both British and cross-cultural studies to illustrate this. Inevitably a product of the time in which it was written, this book nonetheless makes a valuable contribution to intelligence theory as we know it today.

First published in 1950, this revised edition of The Structure of Human Abilities was published in 1961, but remained largely unchanged from the original save for an additional supplement on the developments in factorial work on human abilities from 1950-1959. Much research had been carried out during the years leading up to publication, in England and America, into mental abilities; and modern methods of statistical treatment, especially factor analysis, had been increasingly used. It was felt that the mass of diverse material was apt to confuse the student of psychology of the time, especially as the results of such research were often apparently conflicting. Professor Vernon, one of the leading experts in this branch of psychology, sifted the material and attempted to provide a consistent picture of our mental structure.

This book, edited and authored by a closely collaborating network of social scientists and psychologists, recasts typical research topics in these fields into the language of nonlinear, dynamic and complex systems. The aim is to provide scientists with different backgrounds - physics, applied mathematics and computer sciences - with the opportunity to apply the tools of their trade to an altogether new range of possible applications. At the same time, this book will serve as a first reference for a new generation of social scientists and psychologists wishing to familiarize themselves with the new methodology and the "thinking in complexity".

This edited volume addresses memory practices among youth, families, cultural workers, activists, and engaged citizens in Lebanon and Morocco. In making a claim for 'the social life of memory,' the introduction discusses a particular research field of memory studies, elaborating an approach to memory in terms of social production and engagement. The Arab Spring is evoked to draw attention to new rifts within and between history and remembrance in the regions of North Africa and the Middle East. As authoritarian forms of governance are challenged, official panoramic narratives are confronted with a multiplicity of memories of violent pasts. The eight chapters trace personal and public inventories of violence, trauma, and testimony, addressing memory in cinema, in newspapers and periodicals, as an experience of public environments, through transnational and diasporic mediums, and amongst younger generations.

The Clinical Neuroscience of Lateralization gives the first comprehensive transdiagnostic overview of the evidence for changes in hemispheric asymmetries in different psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Taking a multidisciplinary perspective informed by both basic science and clinical studies, the authors integrate recent breakthroughs on hemispheric asymmetries in psychology, neuroscience, genetics and comparative research. They give a general introduction to hemispheric asymmetries and the techniques used to assess them, and review the evidence for changes in hemispheric asymmetries in different psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. The book also discusses neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis and highlights the importance of open science in clinical laterality research. Offering a fresh perspective on a longstanding issue in clinical neuroscience, this book will be of great interest for academics, researchers, and students in the fields of clinical and developmental neuroscience, biopsychology and neuropsychology.

Applying current theory and research, this book links the development of sex differences in cognition to biological foundations, multiple social processes, and contextual factors. Areas covered include evolutionary biology, neuroscience, social roles, and cultural contextualism and the issues of the onset, causes, developmental trajectories, and patterns in children's and adolescents' thinking, problem-solving, academic performance, and social conditions that are related to behaviors in each of these areas. An edited volume with chapters by leading scholars, this book is meant for use by graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of developmental cognitive and psychology, learning and socialization, biology, and education. Cognitive domains addressed include language and verbal abilities, mathematical and quantitative abilities, spatial abilities, and social cognition.

Multimedia messages use combinations of texts, pictures, maps, and graphs as tools for communication. This book provides a synthesis of theory and research about how people comprehend multimedia. It adopts the perspectives of cognitive psychology, semiotics, anthropology, linguistics, education, and art. Its central idea is that information displays can be categorized into two different but complementary forms of representations, which service different purposes in human cognition and communication. Specific interaction between these representations enhances comprehension, thinking, and problem solving, as illustrated by numerous examples. Multimedia Comprehension is written for a broad audience with no special prior knowledge. It is of interest to everyone trying to understand how people comprehend multimedia, from scholars and students in psychology, communication, and education, to web- and interface-designers and instructors.

The Neuropsychology of Individual Differences: A Developmental Per spective was designed to sliIVey the complexities and subtleties of neu rologically based differences in human beings. By conceptualizing and presenting subject matter in a developmental sequence, we hoped to emphasize the inseparable union between the science of neuropsychology and the study of human behavior. Following a brief introductory chapter, the volume opens with chap ters concerning critical preliminary questions, such as establishing a foundation and rationale for a neuropsychological basis for individual differences and consideration of important methodological issues. It pro ceeds with discussions of the role of neuropsychology in the individual's efforts to organize the world via such basic means as perception and temperament. Three chapters follow that discuss individual differences in higher cortical functions: cognitive ability, language, and learning. Neuropsychological differences between the sexes and in the expression of psychopathological and neurological conditions comprise the topics for the next three chapters. The final topical chapter provides a discussion of rehabilitation of neurological disorders in children, and the volume concludes with a synthesis of all contributions."

Investigations into how the brain actually works have led to remarkable discoveries of late, and these findings carry profound implications for interpreting literature. John Donne's probing insights, expressed in his unique Metaphysical style, make his amorous verse a ripe subject for cognitive analysis. This study applies recent breakthroughs from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology in order to deepen our understanding of Songs and Sonnets. By applying findings from neurolinguistics to Donne's work, Michael Winkleman presents a test case for the cognitive interpretation of verse and, more broadly, advances the case of New Humanism.

PHILOSOPHY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE: CATEGORIES, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND REASONING The individual man, since his separate existence is manifested only by ignorance and error, so far as he is anything apart from his fellows, and from what he and they are to be, is only a negation. Peirce, Some Consequences of Four Incapacities. 1868. For the second time the International Colloquium on Cognitive Science gathered at San Sebastian from May, 7-11, 1991 to discuss the following main topics: Knowledge of Categories Consciousness Reasoning and Interpretation Evolution, Biology, and Mind It is not an easy task to introduce in a few words the content of this volume. We have collected eleven invited papers presented at the Colloquium, which means the substantial part of it. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to include all the invited lectures of the meeting. Before sketching and showing the relevance of each paper, let us explain the reasons for having adopted the decision to organize each two years an international colloquium on Cognitive Science at Donostia (San Sebastian). First of all, Cognitive Science is a very active research area in the world, linking multidisciplinary efforts coming mostly from psychology, artificial intelligence, theoretical linguistics and neurobiology, and using more and more formal tools. We think that this new discipline lacks solid foundations, and in this sense philosophy, particularly knowledge theory, and logic must be called for.