Why are some people more mentally able than others ? In an authoritative, critical and intergrated series of review essays Professor Ian Deary inquires after the cognitive and biological foundations of human mental ability differences. Many accounts of intelligence have examined the structure and number of human mental ability differences and whether they can predict sucess in education,work and social life. Few books have taken psychometric intelligence differences as a starting point and brought together the reductionistic attempts to explain them.New to the highly acclaimed Oxford Psychology Series, Looking Down on Human Intelligence appraises the search for the origins of psychometric intelligence differences in terms of brain function parameters. The book provides an original and thought provoking guide to ancient and modern research on one of the most compelling questions in human psychology.

Where do spontaneous thoughts come from? It may be surprising that the seemingly straightforward answers "from the mind" or "from the brain" are in fact an incredibly recent understanding of the origins of spontaneous thought. For nearly all of human history, our thoughts - especially the most sudden, insightful, and important - were almost universally ascribed to divine or other external sources. Only in the past few centuries have we truly taken responsibility for their own mental content, and finally localized thought to the central nervous system - laying the foundations for a protoscience of spontaneous thought. But enormous questions still loom: what, exactly, is spontaneous thought? Why does our brain engage in spontaneous forms of thinking, and when is this most likely to occur? And perhaps the question most interesting and accessible from a scientific perspective: how does the brain generate and evaluate its own spontaneous creations? Spontaneous thought includes our daytime fantasies and mind-wandering; the flashes of insight and inspiration familiar to the artist, scientist, and inventor; the nighttime visions we call dreams; and clinical phenomena such as repetitive depressive rumination. This Handbook brings together views from neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, history, education, contemplative traditions, and clinical practice to begin to address the ubiquitous but poorly understood mental phenomena that we collectively call 'spontaneous thought.' In studying such an abstruse and seemingly impractical subject, we should remember that our capacity for spontaneity, originality, and creativity defines us as a species - and as individuals. Spontaneous forms of thought enable us to transcend not only the here and now of perceptual experience, but also the bonds of our deliberately-controlled and goal-directed cognition; they allow the space for us to be other than who we are, and for our minds to think beyond the limitations of our current viewpoints and beliefs.

What are the landmarks of the cognitive revolution? What are the core topics of modern cognitive science? Where is cognitive science heading? These and other questions are addressed in this volume by leading cognitive scientists as they examine the work of one of cognitive science's most influential and polemical figures: Jerry Fodor. Contributions by Noam Chomsky, Tom Bever, Merrill Garrett, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Zenon Pylyshyn, Janet Fodor, C. Randy Gallistel, Ernie Lepore, Mary C. Potter, Lila R. Gleitman, and others, put in perspective Fodor's contribution to cognitive science by focusing on three main themes: the nature of concepts, the modularity of language and vision, and the language of thought. On Modules, Concepts, and Language: Cognitive Science at Its Core is a one-of-a-kind series of essays on cognitive science and on Fodor. In this volume, Chomsky contrasts, for the first time, his view of modularity with that of Fodor's; Bever-one of the pioneers of modern psycholinguistics-discusses the nature of consciousness in particular with respect to language perception; Garrett-another of the pioneers of psycholinguistics-reassesses his view of modularity in language production; Pylyshyn-one of the leading figures of the modern symbolic, computational view of the mind-presents his view of the connection between visual perception and conceptual attainment; Gallistel-one of the most prominent cognitive neuroscientists-presents a proposal on what the biological bases of the computational theory of mind might be. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini discusses Fodor's views on conceptual nativism, stemming from the epic debate between Chomsky and Piaget, which Piattelli-Palmarini organized. These and many other key figures of cognitive science are brought together, for the first time, constituting the most up-to-date critical view of some of cognitive science's most polemical topics and its prospects as the science of the mind. This volume is aimed at students and advanced researchers in core areas of cognitive science and is bound to become one of the classics in the field.

This book explores the evolution of the mental competence for self-reflection: why it evolved, under what selection pressures, in what environments, out of what precursors, and with what mental resources. Integrating evolutionary, psychological, and philosophical perspectives, Radu J. Bogdan argues that the competence for self-reflection, uniquely human and initially autobiographical, evolved under strong and persistent sociocultural and political (collaborative and competitive) pressures on the developing minds of older children and later adults. Self-reflection originated in a basic propensity of the human brain to rehearse anticipatively mental states, speech acts, actions, and states of the world in order to service one's elaborate goal policies. These goal policies integrate offline representations of one's own mental states and actions and those of others in order to handle the challenges of a complex and dynamic sociopolitical and sociocultural life, calling for an adaptive intramental self-regulation: that intramental adaptation is self-reflection.

This book introduces readers to the state-of-the-art neuroscientific research that is revolutionizing our understanding of language. Interest in the brain bases of language goes back to the birth of the modern neurosciences in the late nineteenth century. Today, tools such as fMRI and EEG allow us to study brain activity non-invasively as people perform complex cognitive tasks like talking or reading. In this book, Jonathan Brennan shows how brain signals are connected with the intricate cognitive structures that underlie human language. Each chapter focuses on specific insights including the neural codes for speech perception, meaning, and sentence structure. The book also explores larger themes such as how to connect abstract notions like "knowing a language" to concrete signals that are measured in a laboratory, and how to reconcile apparently conflicting pieces of data that arise from different experiments. Written in an accessible, conversational style, and featuring a glossary of key terms, this slim guide will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in how the human brain allows us to use language.

Linguistic interaction between two people is the fundamental form of communication, yet almost all research in language use focuses on isolated speakers and listeners. In this innovative work, Garrod and Pickering extend the scope of psycholinguistics beyond individuals by introducing communication as a social activity. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, philosophical and sociological research, they expand their theory that alignment across individuals is the basis of communication, through the model of a 'shared workspace account'. In this workspace, interlocutors are actors who jointly manipulate and control the interaction and develop similar representations of both language and social context, in order to achieve communicative success. The book also explores dialogue within groups, technologies, as well as the role of culture more generally. Providing a new understanding of cognitive representation, this trailblazing work will be highly influential in the fields of linguistics, psychology and cognitive linguistics.

Linguistic interaction between two people is the fundamental form of communication, yet almost all research in language use focuses on isolated speakers and listeners. In this innovative work, Garrod and Pickering extend the scope of psycholinguistics beyond individuals by introducing communication as a social activity. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, philosophical and sociological research, they expand their theory that alignment across individuals is the basis of communication, through the model of a 'shared workspace account'. In this workspace, interlocutors are actors who jointly manipulate and control the interaction and develop similar representations of both language and social context, in order to achieve communicative success. The book also explores dialogue within groups, technologies, as well as the role of culture more generally. Providing a new understanding of cognitive representation, this trailblazing work will be highly influential in the fields of linguistics, psychology and cognitive linguistics.

Drawing from the study of human reasoning, Argumentation describes different types of arguments and explains how they influence beliefs and behaviour. Raymond Nickerson identifies many of the fallacies, biases, and other flaws often found in arguments as well as 'stratagems' (schemes, illogical and alogical tactics) that people regularly use to persuade others. Much attention is given to the evaluation of arguments. Readers will learn a new schematic for evaluating arguments based on cognitive science. As a source for understanding and evaluating arguments in decision-making, it is ideal for courses on cognition, reasoning, and psychology.

Drawing from the study of human reasoning, Argumentation describes different types of arguments and explains how they influence beliefs and behaviour. Raymond Nickerson identifies many of the fallacies, biases, and other flaws often found in arguments as well as 'stratagems' (schemes, illogical and alogical tactics) that people regularly use to persuade others. Much attention is given to the evaluation of arguments. Readers will learn a new schematic for evaluating arguments based on cognitive science. As a source for understanding and evaluating arguments in decision-making, it is ideal for courses on cognition, reasoning, and psychology.

This book evaluates the potential of the pragmatist notion of habit possesses to influence current debates at the crossroads between philosophy, cognitive sciences, neurosciences, and social theory. It deals with the different aspects of the pragmatic turn involved in 4E cognitive science and traces back the roots of such a pragmatic turn to both classical and contemporary pragmatism. Written by renowned philosophers, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and social theorists, this volume fills the need for an interdisciplinary account of the role of 'habit'. Researchers interested in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, social theory, and social ontology will need this book to fully understand the pragmatist turn in current research on mind, action and society.

Bodies and Other Objects is written for students, scholars and anyone with an interest in embodied cognition - the claim that the human mind cannot be understood without regard for the actions and capacities of the body. The impulse to write this book was a dissatisfaction with the inconsistent, and often shallow, use of the term 'embodied cognition'. This text attempts to reframe cognitive science with a unified theory of embodied cognition in which sensorimotor elements provide the basis for cognition, including symbolic exchanges that arise within a society of agents. It draws ideas and evidence from experimental psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and anthropology in reaching the conclusion that human cognition is best understood as the means by which exchanges within a constantly evolving network of skilful bodies and objects are regulated so as to further human interests.

Luciano Floridi presents an innovative approach to philosophy, conceived as conceptual design. He explores how we make, transform, refine, and improve the objects of our knowledge. His starting point is that reality provides the data, to be understood as constraining affordances, and we transform them into information, like semantic engines. Such transformation or repurposing is not equivalent to portraying, or picturing, or photographing, or photocopying anything. It is more like cooking: the dish does not represent the ingredients, it uses them to make something else out of them, yet the reality of the dish and its properties hugely depend on the reality and the properties of the ingredients. Models are not representations understood as pictures, but interpretations understood as data elaborations, of systems. Thus, he articulates and defends the thesis that knowledge is design and philosophy is the ultimate form of conceptual design. Although entirely independent of Floridi's previous books, The Philosophy of Information (OUP 2011) and The Ethics of Information (OUP 2013), The Logic of Information both complements the existing volumes and presents new work on the foundations of the philosophy of information.

Grammar and Conceptualization documents some major developments in the theory of cognitive grammar during the last decade. By further articulating the framework and showing its application to numerous domains of linguistic structure, this book substantiates the claim that lexicon, morphology, and syntax form a gradation consisting of assemblies of symbolic structures (form-meaning pairings).

Linked to the Early Career Framework, this book provides an understanding of cognitive load theory and its application to teaching for all those training or new to the job. Cognitive science is fast becoming the cornerstone for understanding how students learn and is revolutionising the way we teach pupils at both primary and secondary levels. The techniques informed by cognitive science are evidence-based and proven to work, providing clear benefits for both the early career teacher and your pupils. This book outlines the principles of cognitive load theory and metacognition so that you can feel in control of your own learning and understand how to harness the learning of your students. It provides concise explanations and practical strategies that you can use in the classroom, enabling you to confidently plan and teach lessons with a reflective, metacognitive approach underpinned by key cognitive science principles.

Pushing back against the potential trivialization of moral psychology that would reduce it to emotional preferences, this book takes an enactivist, self-organizational, and hermeneutic approach to internal conflict between a basic exploratory drive motivating the search for actual truth, and opposing incentives to confabulate in the interest of conformity, authoritarianism, and cognitive dissonance, which often can lead to harmful worldviews. The result is a new possibility that ethical beliefs can have truth value and are not merely a result of ephemeral altruistic or cooperative feelings. It will interest moral and political psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, and all who are concerned with inner emotional conflicts driving ethical thinking beyond mere emotivism, and toward moral realism, albeit a fallibilist one requiring continual rethinking and self-reflection. It combines 'basic emotion' theories (such as Panksepp) with hermeneutic depth psychology. The result is a realist approach to moral thinking emphasizing coherence rather than foundationalist theory of knowledge.

Contemporary cognitive science clearly tells us that attention is modulated for speech and action. While these forms of goal-directed attention are very well researched in psychology, they have not been sufficiently studied by epistemologists. In this book, Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor develop and defend a theory of epistemic achievements that requires the manifestation of cognitive agency. They examine empirical work on the psychology of attention and assertion, and use it to ground a normative theory of epistemic achievements and virtues. The resulting study is the first sustained, naturalized virtue epistemology, and will be of interest to readers in epistemology, cognitive science, and beyond.

Hailed by the Washington Post as "a sure-footed and witty guide to slippery ethical terrain," a philosophical exploration of AI and the future of the mind that Astronomer Royal Martin Rees calls "profound and entertaining" Humans may not be Earth's most intelligent beings for much longer: the world champions of chess, Go, and Jeopardy! are now all AIs. Given the rapid pace of progress in AI, many predict that it could advance to human-level intelligence within the next several decades. From there, it could quickly outpace human intelligence. What do these developments mean for the future of the mind? In Artificial You, Susan Schneider says that it is inevitable that AI will take intelligence in new directions, but urges that it is up to us to carve out a sensible path forward. As AI technology turns inward, reshaping the brain, as well as outward, potentially creating machine minds, it is crucial to beware. Homo sapiens, as mind designers, will be playing with "tools" they do not understand how to use: the self, the mind, and consciousness. Schneider argues that an insufficient grasp of the nature of these entities could undermine the use of AI and brain enhancement technology, bringing about the demise or suffering of conscious beings. To flourish, we must grasp the philosophical issues lying beneath the algorithms. At the heart of her exploration is a sober-minded discussion of what AI can truly achieve: Can robots really be conscious? Can we merge with AI, as tech leaders like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil suggest? Is the mind just a program? Examining these thorny issues, Schneider proposes ways we can test for machine consciousness, questions whether consciousness is an unavoidable byproduct of sophisticated intelligence, and considers the overall dangers of creating machine minds.

Spotting a face in a crowd is so easy, you take it for granted. But how you do it is one of science's great mysteries. Vision is involved in nearly a third of everything a brain does and explaining how it works reveals more than just how we see. It also tells us how the brain processes information - how it perceives, learns and remembers. In We Know It When We See It, pioneering neuroscientist Richard Masland covers everything from what happens when light hits your retina, to the increasingly sophisticated nerve nets that turn that light into knowledge, to what a computer algorithm must be able to do before it can truly be called 'intelligent'. It is a profound yet accessible investigation into how our bodies make sense of the world.

Neuroscientific evidence has educated us in the ways in which the brain mediates our thought and behavior and, therefore, forced us to critically examine how we conceive of free will. This volume, featuring contributions from an international and interdisciplinary group of distinguished researchers and scholars, explores how our increasing knowledge of the brain can elucidate the concept of the will and whether or to what extent it is free. It also examines how brain science can inform our normative judgments of moral and criminal responsibility for our actions. Some chapters point out the different respects in which mental disorders can compromise the will and others show how different forms of neuromodulation can reveal the neural underpinning of the mental capacities associated with the will and can restore or enhance them when they are impaired.

Pushing back against the potential trivialization of moral psychology that would reduce it to emotional preferences, this book takes an enactivist, self-organizational, and hermeneutic approach to internal conflict between a basic exploratory drive motivating the search for actual truth, and opposing incentives to confabulate in the interest of conformity, authoritarianism, and cognitive dissonance, which often can lead to harmful worldviews. The result is a new possibility that ethical beliefs can have truth value and are not merely a result of ephemeral altruistic or cooperative feelings. It will interest moral and political psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, and all who are concerned with inner emotional conflicts driving ethical thinking beyond mere emotivism, and toward moral realism, albeit a fallibilist one requiring continual rethinking and self-reflection. It combines 'basic emotion' theories (such as Panksepp) with hermeneutic depth psychology. The result is a realist approach to moral thinking emphasizing coherence rather than foundationalist theory of knowledge.

Cognitive Development provides a detailed and accessible account of three main areas: theories of cognitive development, the development of measured intelligence and the development of moral understanding. The theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, Eisenburg and Bruner are discussed. The book is suitable for the AQA-A A2 level examination and students studying cognitive development for the first time at undergraduate level. The Routledge Modular Psychology series is a completely new approach to introductory level psychology, tailor-made for the new modular style of teaching. Each book covers a topic in more detail than any large text-book can, allowing teacher and student to select material exactly to suit any particular course or project. Especially written for those students new to higher-level study, whether at school. College or university, the books include the following designed features to help with technique: practise essays with specialist commentary to show how to achieve a higher grade chapter summaries and summaries of key research glossary and further reading progress and review exercises. Series editors: Cara Flanagan is a Reviser for AS and A2 level Psychology and an experienced teacher and examiner. Philip Banyard is Associate Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Nottingham Trent University and a Chief Examiner for AS and A2 level Psychology.

This collaborative book by five distinguished scholars in overlapping fields suggests that fruitful living is extremely hard work and that social harmony requires the unlocking and the emancipation of the human brain - the core cerebral source for advancing human coherence, connectivity, cohesion and civility. The stakes are simply too high for stakeholders across our country not to respond to the ongoing and escalating crisis of human division and the desperate need for engagement, enlightenment, and acceptance of human diversity. The authors strongly encourage academic and practitioner psychologists, as well as other students and social scientists, to join a timely framed narrative for greater progress in diversity. Neurodiversity aims to encourage dialogue, discourse, and discovery about what may be obvious to many but avoided by most - because its forces us to look inward instead of outward. We can make such inward observations, through the lenses of psychology, cognition, mindfulness, and underleveraged brain capacity amid modern cultural neuroscience. This is critically important - particularly in a time marked by the widespread amplification of ambiguity, angst, ambivalence, and anger. This book focuses on "crucial thinking" versus "critical thinking." The authors pose fundamental questions -- about what we are calling a form of cognitive "levitation" and taxonomical "climbing" (CBDT) -- to think about purposes of intellectual discourse, not necessarily to seek empirical evidence. A special feature of this book is the inclusion of sample student learning outcomes as "provisos" throughout the narrative. We have attempted to integrate the student learning outcomes in the text's narrative and connect them to the sections where they are inserted for the reader. The book's embedded taxonomies can also facilitate the instruction, composition, and conceptualization of targeted student learning outcomes.

Great strides have been made in the field of natural medicine with respect to neurocognition. Once limited to the province of niche publications, these discoveries are now routinely explored in mainstream psychopharmacology, neuroscience, nutrition, and medical journals. Now presented in one convenient volume, Advances in Natural Medicines, Nutraceuticals and Neurocognition reflects the breadth and depth of recent advances in this area. The editors of this volume are affiliated with one of the leading research centers in this area. Bringing together the work of contributors from around the globe, this book examines: The application of cognitive batteries to capture small changes in cognition due to herbal and supplement administration Recent methodological developments related to cognitive aging Neurocognitive effects of isolated compounds, including N-acetylcysteine and lipoic acid The effect of supplementation with multivitamins on cognitive health The impact of agents that improve metabolic activity in the context of neurocognitive function The extent to which essential fatty acids, and in particular omega-3s, can improve cognitive function The application of Chinese medicine in the context of dementia-including herbal extracts, acupuncture, and other approaches Mechanistic and efficacy studies associated with chronic administration of the Indian herb Bacopa monnieri (BM) The efficacy of herbal abstracts in the treatment of anxiety disorders, depression, and insomnia The Chinese club moss alkaloid Huperzine A, its mechanisms of action, and its potential in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and related conditions With more than 50 percent of the population taking some sort of natural medicine supplement, the industry is worth tens of billions

Contemporary cognitive science clearly tells us that attention is modulated for speech and action. While these forms of goal-directed attention are very well researched in psychology, they have not been sufficiently studied by epistemologists. In this book, Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor develop and defend a theory of epistemic achievements that requires the manifestation of cognitive agency. They examine empirical work on the psychology of attention and assertion, and use it to ground a normative theory of epistemic achievements and virtues. The resulting study is the first sustained, naturalized virtue epistemology, and will be of interest to readers in epistemology, cognitive science, and beyond.