Around the world and throughout history, in cultures as diverse as ancient Mesopotamia and modern America, human beings have been compelled by belief in gods and developed complex religions around them. But why? What makes belief in supernatural beings so widespread? And why are the gods of so many different people so similar in nature? This provocative book explains the origins and persistence of religious ideas by looking through the lens of science at the common structures and functions of human thought.
The first general introduction to the "cognitive science of religion," Minds and Gods presents the major themes, theories, and thinkers involved in this revolutionary new approach to human religiosity. Arguing that we cannot understand what we think until we first understand how we think, the book sets out to study the evolutionary forces that modeled the modern human mind and continue to shape our ideas and actions today. Todd Tremlin details many of the adapted features of the brain -- illustrating their operation with examples of everyday human behavior -- and shows how mental endowments inherited from our ancestral past lead many people to naturally entertain religious ideas. In short, belief in gods and the social formation of religion have their genesis in biology, in powerful cognitive processes that all humans share.
In the course of illuminating the nature of religion, this book also sheds light on human nature: why we think we do the things we do and how the reasons for these things are so often hidden from view. This discussion ranges broadly across recent scientific findings in areas such as paleoanthropology, primate studies, evolutionary psychology, early braindevelopment, and cultural transmission. While these subjects are complex, the story is told here in a conversational style that is engaging, jargon free, and accessible to all readers. With Minds and Gods, Tremlin offers a roadmap to a fascinating and growing field of study, one that is sure to generate interest and debate and provide readers with a better understanding of themselves and their beliefs.

How did we get from unconscious material forces to the dazzling intricacy of the human mind? Standard evolutionary theory has not provided us with a continuous picture of that long emergence. In consequence, psychological theories remain highly fragmented, without deeper roots or foundations, while the general public either remain confused, or invoke miracles or the hand of an intelligent designer. This book provides new concepts from dynamic systems theory, and the new evolutionary synthesis, to present a comprehensive overview of the evolution of cognition. It combines ideas about complexity and environmental structure to highlight the emergence of intelligent systems very early in evolution. Intelligent systems came to dominate evolution through increasing complexity, including cell signalling, epigenetics, developmental systems, behaviour, brain and cognitive systems, to culminate in the human cognitive and other mental systems. This volume has fundamental implications for psychological theory and our understanding of humanity.

This book explains the foundation of approximate Bayesian computation (ABC), an approach to Bayesian inference that does not require the specification of a likelihood function. As a result, ABC can be used to estimate posterior distributions of parameters for simulation-based models. Simulation-based models are now very popular in cognitive science, as are Bayesian methods for performing parameter inference. As such, the recent developments of likelihood-free techniques are an important advancement for the field. Chapters discuss the philosophy of Bayesian inference as well as provide several algorithms for performing ABC. Chapters also apply some of the algorithms in a tutorial fashion, with one specific application to the Minerva 2 model. In addition, the book discusses several applications of ABC methodology to recent problems in cognitive science. Likelihood-Free Methods for Cognitive Science will be of interest to researchers and graduate students working in experimental, applied, and cognitive science.

What holds together the various fields that are supposed to consititute the general intellectual discipline that people now call cognitive science? In this book, Erneling and Johnson identify two problems with defining this discipline. First, some theorists identify the common subject matter as the mind, but scientists and philosophers have not been able to agree on any single, satisfactory answer to the question of what the mind is. Second, those who speculate about the general characteristics that belong to cognitive science tend to assume that all the particular fields falling under the rubric--psychology, linguistics, biology, and son on--are of roughly equal value in their ability to shed light on the nature of mind. This book argues that all the cognitive science disciplines are not equally able to provide answers to ontological questions about the mind, but rather that only neurophysiology and cultural psychology are suited to answer these questions. However, since the cultural account of mind has long been ignored in favor of the neurophysiological account, Erneling and Johnson bring together contributions that focus especially on different versions of the cultural account of the mind.

The culmination of Romanes's highly influential analysis of the phylogenetic development of mind. Analyzing and rejecting the various arguments adduced against the continuity of descent as applied to human mind and building a positive case based on presumed parallels between ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, Romanes presented the classic 19th century account of the origin of human faculty.

This book offers a widely interdisciplinary approach to investigating important questions surrounding the cognitive foundations of group attitudes and social interaction. The volume tackles issues such as the relationship between individual and group attitudes, the cognitive bases of group identity and group identification and the link between emotions and individual attitudes. This volume delves into the links between individual attitudes (such as beliefs, goals and intentions) and how they are reflected in shared attitudes where common belief, collective acceptance, joint intentions, and group preferences come into play. It pursues answers to the connections between trust and beliefs, goals and intentions and attempts to investigate questions such as: does trust have an affective component and how it may relate to hope and fear? The volume also scrutinizes game theory and questions whether it can satisfactorily explain and model social interaction and if there may be any concepts which are not addressed by the current theory. Contributors are derived from disciplines including philosophy, economics, psychology, logic and computer science. Interdisciplinary in scope and comprehensive detail, this volume integrates a variety of approaches - philosophical, psychological and artificial intelligence - to strategic, normative and emotional aspects of social interaction.

This book explores how grammatical structure is related to meaning. The meaning of a phrase clearly depends on its constituent words and how they are combined. But how does structure contribute to meaning in natural language? Does combining adjectives with nouns (as in 'brown dog') differ semantically from combining verbs with adverbs (as in 'barked loudly')? What is the significance of combining verbs with names and quantificational expressions (as in 'Fido chased every cat')? In addressing such questions, Paul Pietroski develops a novel conception of linguistic meaning according to which the semantic contribution of combining expressions is simple and uniform across constructions. Drawing on work at the heart of contemporary debates in linguistics and philosophy, the author argues that Donald Davidson's treatment of action sentences as event descriptions should be viewed as an instructive special case of a more general semantic theory. The unified theory covers a wide range of examples, including sentences that involve quantification, plurality, descriptions of complex causal processes, and verbs that take sentential complements. Professor Pietroski also provides fresh ways of thinking about much discussed semantic generalizations that seem to reflect innately determined aspects of human languages. Designed to be accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of elementary logic, Events and Semantic Architecture will interest a wide range of scholars in linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science.

Recent years have witnessed a revival of research in the interplay between cognition and emotion. The reasons for this renaissance are many and varied. In the first place, emotion theorists have come to recognise the pivotal role of cognitive factors in virtually all aspects of the emotion process, and to rely on basic cognitive factors insight in creating new models of affective space. Also, the successful application of cognitive therapies to affective disorders has promoted clinical psychologists to work towards a clearer understanding of the connections between cognitive processes and emotional problems. And whereas the cognitive revolutionaries of the 1960s regarded emotions with suspicion, viewing them as nagging sources of 'hot' noise in an otherwise cool, rational, and computer-like system of information processing, cognitive researchers of the 1990s regard emotions with respect, owing to their potent and predictable effects on tasks as diverse as object perception, episodic recall, and risk assessment. These intersecting lines of interest have made cognition and emotion one of the most active and rapidly developing areas within psychological science.

Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads is a collection of essays, most of them written from a cognitive linguistics standpoint by leading specialists in the fields of conceptual metaphor and metonymy, and conceptual integration (blending). The book has two main goals. One of them is to discuss in new, provocative ways the nature of these conceptual mappings in English and their interaction. The other goal is to explore by means of several detailed case studies the central role of these mappings in English. The studies are, thus, concerned with the operation of metaphor and metonymy in discourse, including literary discourse or with the effect of metaphorical and/or metonymic mappings on some aspects of linguistic structure, be it polysemy or grammar. The book is of interest to students and researchers in English and linguistics, English literature, cognitive psychology and cognitive science.

Foundations of Art Therapy: Theory and Applications is an essential and comprehensive introduction to the field of art therapy that blends relevant psychological and neuroscience research, theories, and concepts and infuses cultural diversity throughout each chapter. The text includes full color photos, informative charts, and case examples and is divided into four parts beginning with the basics of art therapy knowledge and concluding with professional practices in art therapy. The fundamentals of art therapy section includes coverage of art therapy founders, art materials, multicultural perspectives, intersections with neuroscience, and research methods. An overview and in-depth explorations of different theoretical approaches to the practice of art therapy are covered in the second part of the book. A bio-psycho-social approach integrates current research on art therapy with specific populations (children, mental health, older adults, and trauma). The book concludes with art therapy professional practices in group concepts, community-based art therapy, and developing a career in the field. Each chapter contains chapter objectives, practical applications, ethical considerations, reflection questions, experiential exercises, and a list of terms. The unique, practical, and interdisciplinary approach of this text provides a solid base for understanding the field of art therapy and is well suited for use in undergraduate art therapy courses. This book will appeal to those who want an introduction to the field's theories, research, and practice and those seeking a comprehensive understanding on the foundations of art therapy.

The Roman cult of Mithras was the most widely-dispersed and densely-distributed cult throughout the expanse of the Roman Empire from the end of the first until the fourth century AD, rivaling the early growth and development of Christianity during the same period. As its membership was largely drawn from the ranks of the military, its spread, but not its popularity is attributable largely to military deployments and re-deployments. Although mithraists left behind no written archival evidence, there is an abundance of iconographic finds. The only characteristic common to all Mithraic temples were the fundamental architecture of their design, and the cult image of Mithras slaying a bull. How were these two features so faithfully transmitted through the Empire by a non-centralized, non-hierarchical religious movement? The Minds of Mithraists: Historical and Cognitive Studies in the Roman Cult of Mithras addresses these questions as well as the relationship of Mithraism to Christianity, explanations of the significance of the tauroctony and of the rituals enacted in the mithraea, and explanations for the spread of Mithraism (and for its resistance in a few places). The unifying theme throughout is an investigation of the 'mind' of those engaged in the cult practices of this widespread ancient religion. These investigations represent traditional historical methods as well as more recent studies employing the insights of the cognitive sciences, demonstrating that cognitive historiography is a valuable methodological tool.

The Science of Dream Interpretation presents a scientific, historic and psychological account of dream interpretation by introducing the biological and evolutionary foundations of sleep, dreams and dream interpretation. Chapters cover the theory of dream interpretation, the physiological and evolutionary reasons for sleep and dreaming, an overview of the role dreams and dream interpretation throughout history, including the cultural and religious significance of dreams, and how dreams interrupt sleep, including issues of insomnia, sleep walking, and more. The next few sections present influential dream theorists of the 20th century, including a review of their theories (Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Fritz Perls). The final section explains how dreams may be used to extract personal meanings and be utilized in psychotherapy, including case examples from actual psychotherapy sessions of the techniques used to interpret dreams.

In this book, cognitive economics is understood either in a broad sense as the influence exerted by some achievements of cognitive science on economics, or in a more restricted sense as the study of mental and adaptation processes implemented by economic agents in their interactions. In response to some critics addressed to the rationality and equilibrium principles in classical economics, cognitive economics associates an epistemic program grounded on individual beliefs and reasoning and an evolutionist program concerned with learning processes in a social context. The book, which is the result of the first Conference about Cognitive Economics held in Europe, gives an overview of various recent achievements of cognitive economics and is intended to better define its motivations and its boundaries. The proposed articles deal with the individual deliberation process of a single decision-maker, the conjoint learning process of several players in a game, the coordination of heterogenous economic agents through beliefs as well as with applications to entrepreneurial behavior, consumer interactions or knowledge economics. These articles also illustrate the different tools and methods which are currently used in the domain and enlarge those traditionally used in economics, from analytical work to model simulations, from conceptual work to laboratory experiments.
*Contributions to Economic Analysis was established in 1952
*The series purpose is to stimulate the international exchange of scientific information
*The series includes books from all areas of macroeconomics and microeconomics

Shaping the Future of Child and Adolescent Mental Health: Towards Technological Advances and Service Innovations coincides with the 25th International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions (IACAPAP) Congress in Dubai from December 5-9, 2022. There are three overarching themes of this book. Firstly, the impact of the Internet and digital technologies on the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents, including computerized therapies, and the fundamental role of technologies to advance knowledge in the field. Secondly, a theme on harnessing the expansion of knowledge on psychiatric disorders and their treatment for children and adolescents, exemplified by chapters on different kinds of adversity in child and adolescent mental health and a chapter on precision therapeutics. Given the location of the IACAPAP Congress, the third theme focuses on aspects of child and adolescent mental health in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. Chapters provide insights into a broad range of contemporary technology- and service innovation-related topics in child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health. These include growing up in the digital age, cyberbullying, clinical applications of big data and machine learning, computerized cognitive behavioral therapy, technology- enhanced learning, lessons from COVID-19, new understanding of the consequences of psychological trauma, autoimmune encephalitis, and precision therapeutics in depression. Acknowledging the global challenge of child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, readers will find an emphasis on contextual challenges in the field, including innovations for scaling up of mental health intervention in low- and middle-income countries, and research and training in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.

With the rapidly growing demand for mental health care there is a need for efficient and effective psychological treatment options. Low Intensity Psychological Therapy has become well established in the England Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme as a beneficial and versatile treatment option for mild-moderate symptoms of depression and anxiety. A Pragmatic Guide to Low Intensity Psychological Therapy: Care in High Volume, provides a guide to Low Intensity Psychological Therapy from the perspective of the Low Intensity Practitioner. This book describes the Low Intensity role as part of a multi-disciplinary approach to psychological care. The authors use a series of case vignettes, personal experience and current literature to help navigate the context of the role and its potential for ethical and safe expansion.

How is one to understand the nature of intelligence? One approach is through psychometric testing, but such an approach often puts the "cart before the horse"--the test before the theory. Another approach is to use evolutionary theory. This criterion has been suggested by a number of individuals in the past, from Charles Darwin in the more distant past to Howard Gardner, Stephen Gould, Steven Pinker, Carl Sagan, David Stenhouse, and many others. The chapters in this book address three major questions: 1. Does evolutionary theory help us understand the nature of human intelligence? 2. If so, what does it tell us about the nature of human intelligence? 3. And if so, how has intelligence evolved? The goal of this book is to present diverse points of view on the evolution of intelligence as offered by leading experts in the field. In particular, it may be possible to better understand the nature and societal implications of intelligence by understanding how and why it has evolved as it has. This book is unique in offering a diversity of points of view on the topic of the evolution of human intelligence.

What distinguishes humankind from other species? A leading candidate is our facility at mutual understanding ("theory of mind"), our ability to ascribe thoughts, desires, and feelings to one another. How do we do this? Folk-wisdom says, "By empathy - we put ourselves in other people's shoes". In the last few decades this idea has moved from folk-wisdom to philosophical conjecture to serious scientific theory. This volume collects essays by Alvin Goldman, many of which have played a major role in crystallizing this "simulation," or "empathizing," account of mindreading and showing how it is confirmed by recent findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Regions of your brain resonate with the brains of others when you observe them manifest their feelings in facial affect or see them about to undergo a painful stimulus or a mere touch on the arm. Essays in the volume explore an array of topics in the philosophy of cognitive science, ranging from embodied cognition to the metaphysics of actions and events. "Embodied cognition" is a catch-phrase for a family of current proposals in the philosophy of cognitive science. Some of these call for a radical re-shaping of cognitive science and others for a more measured response to repeated experimental findings that the body - or representations of the body - figure more prominently in cognition than previously recognized. Goldman dives into this terrain with a theory that brings coherence and unity to a large swath of scientific evidence. Other essays revisit his earlier work on action individuation but reconfigure it with a psychologizing twist. The final essay prepares the reader for a futuristic scenario: a book presents you with eerily accurate accounts of your past life, your present thoughts, and even your upcoming decisions. How should you respond to it?

This book proposes a novel CWW model to personalize individual semantics in linguistic decision making, based on two new concepts: numerical scale and consistency-driven methodology. The numerical scale model provides a unified framework to connect different linguistic symbolic computational models for CWW, and the consistency-driven methodology customizes individuals' semantics to support linguistic group decision making by setting personalized numerical scales. The book is a valuable resource for researchers and postgraduates who are interested in CWW in linguistic decision making.

Cybersecurity and Cognitive Science provides the reader with multiple examples of interactions between cybersecurity, psychology and neuroscience. Specifically, reviewing current research on cognitive skills of network security agents (e.g., situational awareness) as well as individual differences in cognitive measures (e.g., risk taking, impulsivity, procrastination, among others) underlying cybersecurity attacks. Chapters on detection of network attacks as well as detection of cognitive engineering attacks are also included. This book also outlines various modeling frameworks, including agent-based modeling, network modeling, as well as cognitive modeling methods to both understand and improve cybersecurity.

Acclaimed neuroscientist Gary Wenk reveals the fascinating impacts of exercise on the brain Decades of research demonstrate that regular modest levels of exercise improve heart and lung function and may relieve joint pain. Regular daily exercise will help your body to regulate blood sugar levels and reduce inflammation, and many of these benefits are a consequence of reducing the amount of body fat you carry around. Your body clearly benefits in many ways from regular exercise. Does your brain benefit as well? Does regular exercise positively affect brain function? Does our thinking become faster because we exercise? Does running a marathon make us smarter? Dr. Gary Wenk's goal is to provide a realistic perspective on what benefits your brain should expect to achieve from exercise. Your Brain on Exercise skillfully blends scholarship with illuminating insights and clarity. Without requiring any specialized knowledge about the brain, Your Brain on Exercise entertainingly illustrates the intersection between brain health, the consequences of exercise, and our need to eat in an entirely new light. An internationally renowned neuroscientist and medical researcher, Dr. Wenk has been educating college and medical students about the brain and lecturing around the world for more than forty years.

Why your worst nightmares about watching horror movies are unfounded Films about chainsaw killers, demonic possession, and ghostly intruders make some of us scream with joy. But while horror fans are attracted to movies designed to scare us, others shudder already at the thought of the sweat-drenched nightmares that terrifying movies often trigger. The fear of sleepless nights and the widespread beliefs that horror movies can have negative psychological effects and display immorality make some of us very, very nervous about them. But should we be concerned? In this book, horror-expert Mathias Clasen delves into the psychological science of horror cinema to bust some of the worst myths and correct the biggest misunderstandings surrounding the genre. In short and highly readable chapters peppered with vivid anecdotes and examples, he addresses the nervous person's most pressing questions: What are the effects of horror films on our mental and physical health? Why do they often cause nightmares? Aren't horror movies immoral and a bad influence on children and adolescents? Shouldn't we be concerned about what the current popularity of horror movies says about society and its values? While media psychologists have demonstrated that horror films indeed have the potential to harm us, Clasen reveals that the scientific evidence also contains a second story that is often overlooked: horror movies can also help us confront and manage fear and often foster prosocial values.

'Wendy Wood is the world's foremost expert in the field, and this book is essential' - Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit. What if you could harness the extraordinary power of your unconscious mind, which already determines so much of what you do, to achieve your goals? Shockingly, we spend nearly half our day repeating things we've done in the past without thinking about them. How we respond to the people around us; the way we conduct ourselves in meetings; what we buy; when and how we exercise, eat and drink - a truly remarkable number of things we do every day, we do by habit. And yet, whenever we want to change something about ourselves, we rely on willpower alone. We hope that our determination and intention will be enough to effect positive change. And that is why almost all of us fail. Professor Wendy Wood is the world's foremost expert on habits. By drawing on three decades of original research, she explains the fascinating science of how we form habits and provides the key to unlocking our habitual mind in order to make the changes we seek. Combining a potent mix of neuroscience, case studies and experiments conducted in her lab, Good Habits, Bad Habits is a comprehensive, accessible and highly practical book that will change the way you think about almost every aspect of your life.

Much of our behavior is guided by our understanding of events. We perceive events when we observe the world unfolding around us, participate in events when we act on the world, simulate events that we hear or read about, and use our knowledge of events to solve problems. In this book, Gabriel A. Radvansky and Jeffrey M. Zacks provide the first integrated framework for event cognition and attempt to synthesize the available psychological and neuroscience data surrounding it. This synthesis leads to new proposals about several traditional areas in psychology and neuroscience including perception, attention, language understanding, memory, and problem solving. Radvansky and Zacks have written this book with a diverse readership in mind. It is intended for a range of researchers working within cognitive science including psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, anthropology, and education. Readers curious about events more generally such as those working in literature, film theory, and history will also find it of interest.

How did human thought evolve into the highly complex process it is today? In the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology, cognitive science and archaeology intersect to provide a more complete and grounded picture of the mind. With the combination of cognitive theories and archaeological evidence, this burgeoning field is only beginning to tap into the potential for a better understanding of the development of specific cognitive abilities. Cognitive Models in Palaeolithic Archaeology explores hominin cognitive development by applying formal cognitive models to analyze prehistoric remains from the entire range of the Palaeolithic, from the earliest stone tools 3.3 million years ago to artistic developments that emerged 50,000 years ago. Several different cognitive models are presented, including expert cognition, information processing, material engagement theory, embodied/extended cognition, neuroaesthetics, visual resonance theory, theory of mind, and neuronal recycling. By examining archaeological remains, and thereby past activities and behavior, through the grounded lenses of these models, a mosaic pattern of human cognitive evolution emerges. This volume, authored by many leading authorities in the field of cognitive archaeology, will attract scholars and students of cognitive evolution and paleoanthropology, who will find a new understanding of hominin cognitive evolution and substantive conclusions about our hominin evolution as opportunities for further research.

Cognitive psychology is an enormous field with a rich history. One problem confronting instructors in cognitive psychology courses is covering such diverse topics as pattern recognition, attention, memory, language, decision-making, and problem solving. It is virtually impossible to both cover these topics and provide details regarding the beauty of the experimental studies that have tackled important topics in a single textbook. Cognitive Psychology: Key Readings helps fill this void and provides students with the opportunity to learn about the details of the actual articles and chapters that have had major influences in the development of this discipline. The classic papers were selected because they have been central in defining distinct areas of research or changing the way researchers think about a given topic. The reader can learn about the available literature that motivated a study, the theoretical rationale, and the details of the methods and results that were used to develop a better understanding of the topic. In this way, the reader can learn about the actual science of uncovering the theoretical issues, instead of simple overviews of the results. In addition, because cognitive psychology is constantly evolving, introductory sections to each topic are provided to help the reader better understand why a particular study is so important to the field. Along with an overview chapter that provides introductions to theoretical and methodological approaches that cognitive researchers have employed, Cognitive Psychology: Key Readings will begin to appreciate how scientists are unravelling how the mind works.

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