Everyone knows what consciousness is: it is what vanishes when we fall into dreamless sleep and reappears when we wake up or when we dream. However, we become less and less confident when we are called to answer fundamental questions about the relationships between consciousness and the physical world. Why is the cerebral cortex associated with consciousness, but not the liver, the heart, the cerebellum or other neural structures? Why does consciousness fade during deep sleep, while cortical neurons remain active? Can unresponsive patients with an island of active cortex surrounded by widespread damage be conscious? Is an artificial system that outperforms people at driving, recognizing faces and objects, and answering difficult questions conscious? Using the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) as a guiding principle, Sizing up Consciousness explores these questions, taking the reader along a fascinating journey from the cerebral cortex to the cerebellum, from wakefulness to sleep, anesthesia, and coma, supercomputers, octopuses, dolphins, and much more besides. By translating theoretical principles into practical measurements, the book outlines a preliminary attempt to identify a general rule to size up the capacity for consciousness within the human skull and beyond. Sizing up Consciousness is a short, accessible book, spanning neuronal activity to existential considerations and is essential reading for anyone interested in awareness and cognition.

Bessere Menschen? Der Mensch hat schon seit jeher Wege gefunden, um sich selbst zu verbessern. Er erfand einfache medizinische und technische Hilfsmittel, wie die Brille oder die Zahnspange, und auch kompliziertere, wie fuhlende Prothesen und Gehirnimplantate. Der technologische und medizinische Fortschritt bringt tiefgreifende Moeglichkeiten der Erweiterung des Menschen mit sich. Visionen von Cyborgs und einem "Upgrade" des Menschen loesen aber nicht ausschliesslich Euphorie, sondern vielfach auch Bedenken aus. Welche technischen, aber vor allem auch welche ethischen Herausforderungen die Zukunft mit sich bringt, steht im Mittelpunkt dieses Buches. Beitrage verschiedener Fachgebiete von Psychologie und Medizin, uber Philosophie und Soziologie bis zu Gender Studies beleuchten, wie sich das Verhaltnis von Mensch und Maschine verandern wird, wie sich die Medizintechnik an der Schnittstelle von "Enhancement" und Therapie bewegt und wie die Gesellschaft auf die tiefgreifenden Veranderungen im Technologiezeitalter reagieren kann.

Starting Out in Methods and Statistics for Psychology: a Hands-on Guide to Doing Research takes first year psychology students through the entire process of doing research in psychology, from exploring designs and methods, to conducting step-by-step, by-hand data analysis, and writing up their findings, all in a friendly and accessible way. The text begins by presenting a thorough overview of research, explaining its central role in psychology as a science and exploring how to read and present research findings before introducing students to both qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. The author then explores experimental and correlational designs in detail, introducing the general principles before addressing the logic of the specific data analyses used in these forms of design. Dedicated chapters show students how to calculate independent and repeated t tests, and independent measures ANOVA in the experimental design section, and correlation and regression analyses in the correlation section. After guiding students through these essentials, the author moves on to a detailed explanation of when to use non-parametric tests, and again takes students through these data analyses in a carefully-paced series of hand calculations. The text concludes with a clear guide to when to use which test, and takes a look forward to the sorts of statistical analyses students will encounter in both published research and the next phase of their studies. Online Resource Centre For students: - A diagnostic maths test to help students identify their - strengths and weaknesses - Example lab reports (good and bad) - Example ethics applications forms - Full answers to the in-text study questions - SPSS screencasts - Links to papers and websites For lecturers: - Worksheets with additional datasets - Fully worked answers to worksheets - Testbank - Figures and tables from the book, ready to download - Animated solutions to the hand calculations

Sacred Knowledge is the first well-documented, sophisticated account of the effect of psychedelics on biological processes, human consciousness, and revelatory religious experiences. Based on nearly three decades of legal research with volunteers, William A. Richards argues that, if used responsibly and legally, psychedelics have the potential to assuage suffering and constructively affect the quality of human life. Richards's analysis contributes to social and political debates over the responsible integration of psychedelic substances into modern society. His book serves as an invaluable resource for readers who, whether spontaneously or with the facilitation of psychedelics, have encountered meaningful, inspiring, or even disturbing states of consciousness and seek clarity about their experiences. Testing the limits of language and conceptual frameworks, Richards makes the most of experiential phenomena that stretch our conception of reality, advancing new frontiers in the study of belief, spiritual awakening, psychiatric treatment, and social well-being. His findings enrich humanities and scientific scholarship, expanding work in philosophy, anthropology, theology, and religious studies and bringing depth to research in mental health, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology.

Behavioural experiments are one of the central and most powerful methods of intervention in cognitive therapy. Yet until now, there has been no volume specifically dedicated to guiding physicians who wish to design and implement behavioural experiments across a wide range of clinical problems. The Oxford Guide to Behavioural Experiments in Cognitive Therapy fills this gap. It is written by clinicians for clinicians. It is a practical, easy to read handbook, which is relevant for practising clinicians at every level, from trainees to cognitive therapy supervisors. Following a foreword by David Clark, the first two chapters provide a theoretical and practical background for the understanding and development of behavioural experiments. Thereafter, the remaining chapters of the book focus on particular problem areas. These include problems which have been the traditional focus of cognitive therapy (e.g. depression, anxiety disorders), as well as those which have only more recently become a subject of study (bipolar disorder, psychotic symptoms), and some which are still in their relative infancy (physical health problems, brain injury). The book also includes several chapters on transdiagnostic problems, such as avoidance of affect, low self-esteem, interpersonal issues, and self-injurious behaviour. A final chapter by Christine Padesky provides some signposts for future development. Containing examples of over 200 behavioural experiments, this book will be of enormous practical value for all those involved in cognitive behavioural therapy, as well as stimulating exploration and creativity in both its readers and their patients.

In the past few years, there has been an explosion of eye movement research in cognitive science and neuroscience. This has been due to the availability of 'off the shelf' eye trackers, along with software to allow the easy acquisition and analysis of eye movement data. Accompanying this has been a realisation that eye movement data can be informative about many different aspects of perceptual and cognitive processing. Eye movements have been used to examine the visual and cognitive processes underpinning a much broader range of human activities, including, language production, dialogue, human computer interaction, driving behaviour, sporting performance, and emotional states. Finally, in the past thirty years, there have been real advances in our understanding of the neural processes that underpin eye movement behaviour. The Oxford Handbook of Eye Movements provides the first comprehensive review of the entire field of eye movement research. In over fifty chapters, it reviews the developments that have so far taken place, the areas actively being researched, and looks at how the field is likely to devlop in the coming years. The first section considers historical and background material, before moving onto section 2 on the neural basis of eye movements. The third and fourth sections looks at visual cognition and eye movements and eye movement pathology and development. The final sections consider eye movements and reading and language processing and eye movements. Bringing together cutting edge research from and international team of leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and vision researchers, this book is the definitive reference work in this field.

What produces emotions? Why do we have emotions? How do we have emotions? Why do emotional states feel like something? What is the relation between emotion, and reward value, and subjective feelings of pleasure? How is the value of a good represented in the brain? Will neuroeconomics replace classical microeconomics? How does the brain implement decision-making? Are gene-defined rewards and emotions in the interests of the genes, and does rational multistep planning enable us to go beyond selfish genes to long-term plans and social contracts in the interests of the individual? This book seeks explanations of emotion and decision-making by considering these questions. The topics covered include: The nature of emotion, and a theory of emotion The functions of emotion, including a Darwinian theory of the adaptive value of emotion, which helps to illuminate many aspects of brain design and behaviour The brain mechanisms of emotion Affective states and motivated behaviour: hunger and sexual behaviour The pharmacology of emotion, and brain mechanisms for action Neuroeconomics, and the foundation of economic value Decision-making Emotional feelings, and consciousness Neural networks involved in emotion The book will be valuable for those in the fields of neuroscience and neurology, psychology, psychiatry, and philosophy

Culture - broadly defined as all we learn from others that endures for long enough to generate customs and traditions - shapes vast swathes of our lives and has allowed the human species to dominate the planet in an evolutionarily unique way. Culture and cultural evolution are uniquely significant phenomena in evolutionary biology: they are products of biological evolution, yet they supplement genetic transmission with social transmission, thus achieving a certain independence from natural selection. However, cultural evolution nevertheless expresses key Darwinian processes itself and also interacts with genetic evolution. Just how culture fits into the grander framework of evolution is a big issue though, yet one that has received relatively little scientific attention compared to, for example, genetic evolution. Our 'capacity for culture' appears so distinctive among animals that it is often thought to separate we cultural beings from the rest of nature and the Darwinian forces that shape it. 'Culture Evolves' presents a different view arising from the recent discoveries of a diverse range of disciplines, that focus on evolutionary continuities. First, recent studies reveal that learning from others and the transmission of traditions are more widespread and significant across the animal kingdom than earlier recognized, helping us understand the evolutionary roots of culture. Second, archaeological discoveries have pushed back the origins of human culture to much more ancient times than traditionally thought. These developments together suggest important continuities between animal and human culture. A third new array of discoveries concerns the later diversification of human cultures, where the operations of Darwinian-like, cultural evolutionary processes are increasingly identified. Finally, surprising discoveries have been made about the imprint of cultural evolution in children's predisposition to acquire culture. The result of a major interdisciplinary meeting held by he Royal Society and the British Academy, this book presents the work of leading experts from the fields of ethology, behavioural ecology, primatology, comparative psychology, archaeology, anthropology, evolutionary biology and developmental psychology.

Musical imagination and creativity are amongst the most abstract and complex aspects of musical behaviour, though, until recently, they have been difficult to subject to empirical enquiry. However, music psychology and some allied disciplines have now developed, both theoretically and methodologically, to the point where some of these topics are now firmly within our grasp. The study of creativity and imagination is growing rapidly in disciplines including psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and education. The inter- and multidisciplinary study of music, and developments in music psychology in particular, mean that studies of musical imagination and creativity in action are now distinctly possible 'Musical Imaginations' is a wide ranging, multidisciplinary review of the latest theory and research on musical creativity, performance and perception by some of the most eminent scholars in their respective disciplines. The topics addressed in this book include the investigation of creativity and imagination in music and emotion, composition and improvisation, performance and performance traditions, listening strategies, different musical genres and cultural belief systems, social collaboration, identity formation, and the development of psychologically-based strategies and interventions for the enhancement of performing musicians. With creativity now a topic of significant interest, this book will be valuable to all those in the fields of psychology, sociology, neuroscience, education, as well as to musicians themselves - dealing with practical as well as theoretical issues in music therapy, performance and education. The study of creativity and imagination is growing rapidly in disciplines including psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and education. The inter- and multidisciplinary study of music, and developments in music psychology in particular, mean that studies of musical imagination and creativity in action are now distinctly possible. This book undertakes a multidisciplinary review of these developments. It contains a wide range of contributions by some of the most eminent scholars in their respective disciplines, representing a comprehensive account of the state of the art of theory and research on musical creativity, performance and perception.

Human behaviour is marvellous in its complexity, variability and unpredictability. Understanding it, however, is not solely the role of psychologists: everyone has a vested interest in it, from individuals to organisations and industry. Recently, biologists and psychologists have had considerable success incorporating insights from evolutionary theory to help them understand some fundamental psychological issues, in a discipline now known as evolutionary psychology. However, to date, these useful insights have not been widely applied to tackle specific practical problems or issues in society. This innovative new book kick-starts this process. It provides a foundation for an incipient focus on applications of evolutionary research. It draws together a collection of renowned academics from a disparate set of fields, whose common interest lies in using evolutionary thinking to inform their research. Topics range from reviews of evolutionary perspectives on adult and family relationships, insights into business, economics and marketing, health and interactions with technology and the media, through to major global and societal issues such as promoting green behaviour, cooperation, and public health, and tackling crime, terrorism, and prejudice. No other book has focused as specifically and with such broad scope on the applications of modern evolutionary psychology. While the rapidly growing number of books on evolutionary psychology succeed in describing current theoretical thinking, illustrated and supported by empirical studies, this book uses this established basis as a backdrop and starting point for a more focused exploration of practical application. This groundbreaking book will be valuable for students and researchers in evolutionary and applied psychology, as well as biology and anthropology.

In the past few years, there has been an explosion of eye movement research in cognitive science and neuroscience. This has been due to the availability of 'off the shelf' eye trackers, along with software to allow the easy acquisition and analysis of eye movement data. Accompanying this has been a realisation that eye movement data can be informative about many different aspects of perceptual and cognitive processing. Eye movements have been used to examine the visual and cognitive processes underpinning a much broader range of human activities, including, language production, dialogue, human computer interaction, driving behaviour, sporting performance, and emotional states. Finally, in the past thirty years, there have been real advances in our understanding of the neural processes that underpin eye movement behaviour.
The Oxford Handbook of Eye Movements provides the first comprehensive review of the entire field of eye movement research. In over fifty chapters, it reviews the developments that have so far taken place, the areas actively being researched, and looks at how the field is likely to devlop in the coming years. The first section considers historical and background material, before moving onto section 2 on the neural basis of eye movements. The third and fourth sections looks at visual cognition and eye movements and eye movement pathology and development. The final sections consider eye movements and reading and language processing and eye movements.
Bringing together cutting edge research from and international team of leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and vision researchers, this book is the definitive reference work in this field.

This latest volume in the critically acclaimed and highly influential Attention and Performance series focuses on two of the fastest moving research areas in cognitive and affective neuroscience - decision making and emotional processing.
Decision Making, Affect, and Learning investigates the psychological and neural systems underlying decision making, and the relationship with reward, affect, and learning. In addition, it considers neurodevelopmental and clinical aspects of these issues - for example the role of decision making and reward in drug addiction. It also looks at the applied aspects of this knowledge to other disciplines, including the growing field of Neuroeconomics.
After an introductory chapter from the Volume editors, the book is then arranged according to the following themes:
Psychological Processes underlying decision-making.
Neural systems of decision-making
Neural systems of emotion, reward and learning
Neurodevelopmental and clinical aspects
Superbly written and edited, the book highlights the complex interplay between emotional and decision-making processes and their relationship with learning.

Maladapting Minds discusses a number of reasons why philosophers of psychiatry should take an interest in evolutionary explanations of mental disorders and, more generally, in evolutionary thinking. First of all, there is the nascent field of evolutionary psychiatry. Unlike other psychiatrists, evolutionary psychiatrists engage with ultimate, rather than proximate, questions about mental illnesses. Being a young and youthful new discipline, evolutionary psychiatry allows for a nice case study in the philosophy of science. Secondly, philosophers of psychiatry have engaged with evolutionary theory because evolutionary considerations are often said to play a role in defining the concept of mental disorder. The basic question here is: Can the concept of mental disorder be given an objective definition, or is it rather a normative concept? Thirdly and finally, evolutionary thinking in psychiatry has often been a source of inspiration for a philosophical view on human nature. Thus evolutionary psychiatrists have suggested, for example, that man's vulnerability to mental disorders may well be one of the defining features of our species.
Written by leading authors in philosophy, psychiatry, biology and psychology, this volume illustrates that many debates in contemporary philosophy of psychiatry are profoundly influenced by evolutionary approaches to mental disorders. Conversely, it also reveals how philosophers can help contribute to the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychiatry. It is important reading for a wide range of readers interested in mental health care and philosophy.

'Affective computing' is a branch of computing concerned with the theory and construction of machines which can detect, respond to, and simulate human emotional states. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning the computer sciences, psychology, and cognitive science. Affective computing is a rapidly developing field within industry and science. There is now a great drive to make technologies such as robotic systems, avatars in service-related human computer interaction, e-learning, game characters, or companion devices more marketable by endowing the 'soulless' robots or agents with the ability to recognize and adjust to the user's feelings as well as to be able to communicate appropriate emotional signals.
A Blueprint for Affective Computing: A sourcebook and manual is the very first attempt to ground affective computing within the disciplines of psychology, affective neuroscience, and philosophy. This book illustrates the contributions of each of these disciplines to the development of the ever-growing field of affective computing. In addition, it demonstrates practical examples of cross-fertilization between disciplines in order to highlight the need for integration of computer science, engineering and the affective sciences.
Focusing on a topic at the frontiers of human computer interaction research, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers in psychology, neuroscience, computational neuroscience, computer science, and artificial intelligence.

Dieter Hillert untersucht, wie Bausteine der sprachlichen Evolution diskutiert werden koennen und wie sich diese in Bezug auf den modernen Menschen entwickelt haben. Insbesondere die hier vorgestellten neuronalen Kartierungsmethoden ermoeglichen, wichtige Ergebnisse uber die neuronalen Schaltkreise zu gewinnen, die an der Sprachverarbeitung beteiligt sind. Der Autor verdeutlich zudem kortikale Kartierungen sowohl bei typischem und als auch bei atypischem Sprachverhalten. Entsprechend wird aus diesen angesprochenen Perspektiven besprochen, wie sich unser Sprachvermoegen evolutionar entwickelten hat, um beispielsweise Ideen, Gefuhle, Ziele und Humor lautsprachlich vermitteln zu koennen. Das vorgestellte evolutionare Sprachmodell beruht auf den kognitiven Fahigkeiten unserer biologischen Vorahnen.

Our ability to attend selectively to our surroundings - taking notice of the things that matter, and ignoring those that don't - is crucial if we are to negotiate the world around us in an efficient manner. Several aspects of the temporal dimension turn out to be critical in determining how we can put together and select the events that are important to us as they themselves unfold over time. For example, we often miss events that happen while we are occupied perceiving or responding to another stimulus. On the other hand, temporal regularity between events can also greatly improve our perception. In addition, our perception of the passage of time itself can also be distorted as while we are performing actions or paying attention to different aspects of the environment. Surprisingly, this fascinating and fundamental interplay between ' attention' and 'time' has been relatively neglected in the psychology and neuroscience literatures until very recently.
Attention & Time is the first book to address this foundational topic, bringing together several intriguing and hitherto fragmented findings into a compelling and cohesive field of enquiry. The book contains thirty-one critical-review chapters from internationally recognised experts in the field, carefully organised into three stand-alone, yet extensively cross-referenced, themed sections. Each section focuses on distinct ways in which attention and time influence one another. These sections, each encompassing a range of methodologies from classical cognitive psychology to single-cell neurophysiology, provide functionally unifying frameworks to help guide the reader through the many various experimental and theoretical approaches adopted. Section 1 considers variations of attention across time, and explores how attentional allocation is limited by very short or very long intervals of time. Section 2 describes several types of temporal illusion, illustrating how attention can modulate the perception of the passage of time itself. "A watched pot never boils" and, conversely, "time flies when you're having fun" nicely capture the experimental observation that the degree of attention allocated to stimulus timing contributes to its subjective duration. Finally, Section 3 examines how attention can be directed in time, to predictable or expected moments in time, so as to optimise behaviour.
Bringing conceptually discrete, yet functionally related, fields of temporal attention research together within a single volume, this book provides a comprehensive overview that will be of value to the interested novice in cognitive neuroscience, whilst also inspiring experts in the field to make, perhaps previously overlooked, links with their own field of research.

The activity of neurons in the brain is noisy in that their firing times are random when they are firing at a given mean rate. This introduces a random or stochastic property into brain processing which we show in this book is fundamental to understanding many aspects of brain function, including probabilistic decision making, perception, memory recall, short-term memory, attention, and even creativity. In The Noisy Brain we show that in many of these processes, the noise caused by the random neuronal firing times is useful. However, this stochastic dynamics can be unstable or overstable, and we show that the stability of attractor networks in the brain in the face of noise may help to understand some important dysfunctions that occur in schizophrenia, normal aging, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Noisy Brain provides a unifying computational approach to brain function that links synaptic and biophysical properties of neurons through the firing of single neurons to the properties of the noise in large connected networks of noisy neurons to the levels of functional neuroimaging and behaviour. The book describes integrate-and-fire neuronal attractor networks with noise, and complementary mean-field analyses using approaches from theoretical physics. The book shows how they can be used to understand neuronal, functional neuroimaging, and behavioural data on decision-making, perception, memory recall, short-term memory, attention, and brain dysfunctions that occur in schizophrenia, normal aging, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Noisy Brain will be valuable for those in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and biology from advanced undergraduate level upwards. It will also be of interest to those interested in neuroeconomics, animal behaviour, zoology, psychiatry, medicine, physics, and philosophy. The book has been written with modular chapters and sections, making it possible to select particular Chapters for course work. Advanced material on the physics of stochastic dynamics in the brain is contained in the Appendix.

Das Buch informiert uber die positiven Effekte von Natur im Lebensalltag des Menschen. Sowohl infolge der Verstadterung als auch der technologischen Entwicklung verschwindet die naturliche Umwelt aus der Lebenswelt des Menschen immer mehr. Das Buch moechte die Frage beantworten, inwieweit und in welcher Weise ein "Zuruck zur Natur" in gebauten Umwelten und technischen Kulturen Sinn macht. Untersucht wird, wie dies in Wohn- sowie Lern- und Arbeitsumwelten bewerkstelligt werden koennte, und wie Umwelten, die der Erholung und Gesundung dienen, noch starker von der Erholkraft der Natur profitieren koennten. Im abschliessenden Kapitel wird Fragen der Stadtentwicklung bezogen auf die positiven Wirkungen von gruner Natur in der urbanen Umwelten nachgegangen. Das Mensch-Tier-Verhaltnis wird beleuchtet.

Blindsight is an unusual condition where the sufferer can respond to visual stimuli, while lacking any conscious feeling of having seen the stimuli. It occurs after a particular form of brain injury.
The first edition of Blindsight, by one of the pioneers in the field - Lawrence Weiskrantz, reported studies of a patient with this condition. It was an important, much cited publication. In the past twenty years, further work has been done in this area, and this new edition brings the book up to date. Retaining the original text, but adding a substantial new chapter and colour illustrations, the first section of the book summarizes findings on DB since the last published account in 1986. The second part includes information on other new research that has occurred since the last edition. As well as giving an account of research over a number of years into a particular case of blindsight, it provides a discussion of the historical and neurological background, a review of cases reported by other investigators, and a number of theoretical and practical issues and implications.
The book will be valuable for cognitive psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists, as well as philosophers of mind.

Do humans start life with the capacity to detect and mentally represent the objects around them? Or is our object knowledge instead derived only as the result of prolonged experience with the external world? Are we simply able to perceive objects by watching their actions in the world, or do we have to act on objects ourselves in order to learn about their behavior? Finally, do we come to know all aspects of objects in the same way, or are some aspects of our object understanding more epistemologically privileged than others?
The Origins of Object Knowledge presents the most up-to-date survey of the research into how the developing human mind understands the world of objects and their properties. It presents some of the best findings from leading research groups in the field of object representation approached from the perspective of developmental and comparative psychology.
Topics covered in the book all address some aspect of what objects are from a psychological perspective; how humans and animals conceive what they are made of; what properties they possess; how we count them and how we categorize them; even how the difference between animate and inanimate objects leads to different expectations. The chapters also cover the variety of methodologies and techniques that must be used to study infants, young children, and non-human primates and the value of combining approaches to discovering what each group knows.
Bringing together leading researchers, communicating the most contemporary and exciting findings within the field of object representation, this volume will be an important work in the cognitive sciences, and of interest to those across the fields of developmental and comparative psychology.

The ability to communicate through spoken and written language is one of the defining characteristics of the human race, yet it remains a deeply mysterious process. The young science of psycholinguistics attempts to uncover the mechanisms and representations underlying human language. This interdisciplinary field has seen massive developments over the past decade, with a broad expansion of the research base, and the incorporation of new experimental techniques such as brain imaging and computational modelling. The result is that real progress is being made in the understanding of the key components of language in the mind.
The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics brings together the views of 75 leading researchers in psycholinguistics to provide a comprehensive and authoritative review of the current state of the art in psycholinguistics. With almost 50 chapters written by experts in the field, the range and depth of coverage is unequalled. The contributors are eminent in a wide range of fields, including psychology, linguistics, human memory, cognitive neuroscience, bilingualism, genetics, development and neuropsychology. Their contributions are organised into six themed sections, covering word recognition, the mental lexicon, comprehension and discourse, language production, language development, and perspectives on psycholinguistics.
The breadth of coverage, coupled with the accessibility of the short chapter format should make the handbook essential reading for both students and researchers in the fields of psychology, linguistics and neuroscience.

Good reasoning can lead to success; bad reasoning can lead to catastrophe. Yet, it's not obvious how we reason, and why we make mistakes - so much of our mental life goes on outside our awareness. In recent years huge strides have been made into developing a scientific understanding of reasoning. This book by one of the pioneers of the field, Philip Johnson-Laird, looks at the mental processes that underlie our reasoning. It provides the most accessible account yet of the science of reasoning.
We can all reason from our childhood onwards - but how? 'How We Reason' outlines a bold approach to understanding reasoning. According to this approach, we don't rely on the laws of logic or probability - we reason by thinking about what's possible, we reason by seeing what is common to the possibilities. As the book shows, this approach can answer many of the questions about how we reason, and what causes mistakes in our reasoning that can lead to disasters such as Chernobyl. It shows why our irrational fears may become psychological illnesses, why terrorists develop 'crazy' ideologies, and how we can act in order to improve our reasoning. The book ends by looking at the role of reasoning in three extraordinary case histories: the Wright brothers' use of analogies in inventing their flyer, the cryptanalysts' deductions in breaking the German's Enigma code in World War II, and Dr. John Snow's inductive reasoning in discovering how cholera spread from one person to another.
Accessible, stimulating, and controversial, How we Reason presents a bold new approach to understanding one of the most intriguing facets of being human.

The nature of attention is one of the oldest and most central problems in psychology. A huge amount of research has been produced on this subject in the last half century, especially on attention in the visual modality, but a general explanation has remained elusive. Many still view attention research as a field that is fundamentally fragmented. This book takes a different perspective and presents a unified theory of visual attention: the TVA model. The TVA model explains the many aspects of visual attention by just two mechanisms for selection of information: filtering and pigeonholing. These mechanisms are described in a set of simple equations, which allow TVA to mathematically model a large number of classical results in the attention literature. The theory explains psychological and neuroscientific findings by the same equations; TVA is a complete theory of visual attention, linking mind and brain. Aimed at advanced students and professional researchers, Principles of Visual Attention contains a detailed review of the most important research done on attention in vision, spanning cognitive psychology, brain imaging, patient studies, and recordings from single cells in the visual cortex. The book explains the TVA model and shows how it accounts for attentional effects observed across all the research areas described. Principles of Visual Attention offers a uniquely integrated view on a central topic in cognitive neuroscience.

Technological advances have led to an abundance of widely-available data on every aspect of life today. Psychologists today have more information than ever before on human cognition, emotion, attitudes, and behavior. Big Data in Psychological Research addresses the opportunities and challenges and that this data presents to psychological researchers. This edited collection provides an overview of theoretical approaches to the utility and purpose of Big Data, approaches to research design and analysis, collection methods, applications, limitations, best practice recommendations, and key issues related to privacy, security, and ethical concerns that are essential to understand for anyone working with big data. The book also discusses potential future research directions aimed at improving the quality and interpretation of big data projects, as well as the training and evaluation of psychological science teams that conduct research using big data.