All the TV and radio talk shows that have adopted the subject of psychology as a staple are really only dealing with one side of that science - the clinical, or "healing," side. In her enormously intriguing book, Dr. Denise Cummins introduces us to the other side of the science of psychology - the study of the healthy mind and its powers.

Our lives are composed of millions of choices, ranging from trivial to life-changing and momentous. Luckily, our brains have evolved a number of mental shortcuts, biases, and tricks that allow us to quickly negotiate this endless array of decisions. We don't "want "to rationally deliberate every choice we make, and thanks to these cognitive rules of thumb, we don't need to.
Yet these hard-wired shortcuts, mental wonders though they may be, can also be perilous. They can distort our thinking in ways that are often invisible to us, leading us to make poor decisions, to be easy targets for manipulators...and they can even cost us our lives.
The truth is, despite all the buzz about the power of gut-instinct decision-making in recent years, sometimes it's better to stop and say, "On second thought . . ."
The trick, of course, lies in knowing when to trust that instant response, and when to question it. In "On Second Thought, "acclaimed science writer Wray Herbert provides the first guide to achieving that balance. Drawing on real-world examples and cutting-edge research, he takes us on a fascinating, wide-ranging journey through our innate cognitive traps and tools, exposing the hidden dangers lurking in familiarity and consistency; the obstacles that keep us from accurately evaluating risk and value; the delusions that make it hard for us to accurately predict the future; the perils of the human yearning for order and simplicity; the ways our fears can color our very perceptions . . . and much more.
Along the way, Herbert reveals the often-bizarre cross-connections these shortcuts have secretly ingrained in our brains, answering such questions as why jury decisions may be shaped by our ancient need for cleanliness; what the state of your desk has to do with your political preferences; why loneliness can literally make us shiver; how drawing two dots on a piece of paper can desensitize us to violence... and how the very typeface on this page is affecting your decision about whether or not to buy this book.
Ultimately, "On Second Thought "is both a captivating exploration of the workings of the mind and an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to learn how to make smarter, better judgments every day.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Multiple Intelligence Counselling is the doctoral thesis of the author Patrick O'Brien. This book explores the thesis that Gardner's theory of multiple intelligence is an excellent model for counselling and is as relevant in the therapy room as in classrooms. The book traces 10 case studies that demonstrate the use of Gradner's theory in connecting with young clients in the authors practice. Secondly, it argues that the engagement of children in counselling and the development of rapport is best undertaken using a Gardner intelligence that the child is quite comfortable in using. A third point is that Sandplay allowed the counsellor the greatest flexibility in engaging and integrating all intelligences presented by Gardner. A higher level synthesis of the findings is presented in a short fairy tale "Sad knights and magical days."

2011 Reprint of 1913 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve. In 1885, he published his groundbreaking Uber das Gedachtnis ("On Memory," later translated to English as "Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology") in which he described experiments he conducted on himself to describe the processes of learning and forgetting. Ebbinghaus made several findings that are still relevant and supported to this day. First, arguably his most famous finding, the forgetting curve. The forgetting curve describes the exponential curve that illustrates how fast we tend to forget the information we had learned. The sharpest decline is in the first twenty minutes, then in the first hour, and then the curve evens off after about one day.

The purpose of this quasi- experimental, survey research was to examine the potential effects of frustration, low confidence, and inconsistent discipline, on the development of communication skills, and aggression in four year old children. This quantitative study utilized a cross sectional design, and participants included a convenience sample of 49 teachers, parents, and four- year old children from a public preschool in the southern United States. Data from the Parent Relationship Questionnaire and the Behavioral Assessment System for Children-2nd Edition were analyzed using multiple regression. Although no statistically significant relationships were noted between the independent variables (parental relational frustration, low confidence and discipline practice) and dependent variables (aggression and communication development), this study may provide useful information to educators and parents who are seeking ways to prepare children for learning and school success. Important social change implications include improved behavior and improved functioning and communication skills as well as less stress and frustration within families.

All humans want to live ecstatically, to live beyond the ordinary, to feel the fire of love, desire, and experience the mystery of life. Drugs and alcohol can easily induce these feelings, but only temporarily and as addiction occurs, a high price is paid. Eros as Inspiration on the Road to Recovery delves into the question of how encountering Eros in art making can serve as inspiration to develop healthy activities instead of drugs and alcohol. Art making can provide a life-long experience of pleasure, relaxation, excitement, and fantasy. This book examines how art making with American homeless veterans who are chemically dependent can be helpful in the recovery process. Eros unveils himself during the art making process and in the therapeutic relationship expressing feelings of love, desire, and intrigue. The counter/counter-transference issue is dealt with through the heuristic research model, personal supervision, and the expressive arts literature.

Is there something called telepathy? Can we sense in advance what will happen? Can animals navigate using the earth's magnetic field? How can an embryo develop to a complete, mature organism? Goran Brusewitz introduces two separate fields, parapsychology and psychoenergetic systems, the basis for a holistic biology, two fields that seem to be connected to each other. He adds research that indicate the survival of bodily death, and research on consciousness. Almost all of these phenomena are dismissed by the skeptical movement, but a clear analysis shows that most of their arguments can be dismissed. From the foreword: "Brusewitz skillfully weaves parapsychological research and bioenergetic models together, using recent data from the study of biological fields as the connective link. This is an innovative paradigm that I have not detected in other books of this nature. Those who follow his reasoning through to its conclusion will emerge with an expanded view of humanity, of Nature, and the mechanisms that connect them. The implications of Conscious Connections extend beyond parapsychology and psychoenergetics." Stanley Krippner, Saybrook University

Why is it that one person can become severely dependent on drugs or alcohol, whereas another, although exposed to the same environment and experiences, does not? This book describes a series of studies that were conducted in order to examine this vulnerability to addictive behaviour. The book demonstrates how genetic variants, personality traits and responsiveness to substance- related stimuli can influence an individual's propensity toward a severe dependency on drugs. Ultimately, this book explains the importance of genetic variation in substance dependence; it advances our understanding of the personalities of substance abusers and increases our knowledge of neurobehavioural influences on addiction, thus offering a multidisciplinary approach to the study of vulnerability factors to substance dependence. This book adopts a biopsychosocial approach to addiction and should be of particular use to both professionals and students in the field of Addiction as well as to those in Psychology, Health sciences, Counselling and related disciplines.

Can works of art convey psychological pain? This study deals with the question of whether the paintings of famous artists who have committed suicide are reflective of their inner turmoil. The authors discovered that, in the absence of information about or interpretation by the artists, paintings provided sufficient information to enable non-expert judges to make reliable content-related judgements (e.g. destructiveness and hopelessness) that distinguished between paintings created near the time of artists' suicides and their paintings created at a time of better mental well-being. It was also found that non-expert judges were able to correctly identify suicide paintings from an array of various other paintings. The authors discuss the relevance of these findings for psychological work both in terms of assessment and treatment of people with suicidal feelings.

The difference between conscious and unconscious processes is a hard issue. Usually in the literature it is argued that without a mask, participants are conscious of the stimulus, but with a mask they are not. However, how we know that participants are not still conscious of the stimulus after it is masked? In fact, all we know with real reliability is that they can no longer report on what the stimulus was. Here we argue that without a mask, subjects can report what the stimulus was. With a mask, they cannot. This captures the crucial difference and it does so in a way that is unproblematic in itself and neutral with respect to the bigger underlying issues. The book includes a series of experiments and simulations on this subject. The model is new and uses neuromodulation and dynamic computation. It matches the findings in the book and previous experimental studies, with new and/or better results compared to previous models in this area (which are fairly rare).

Dr. Rasolkhani-Kalhorn produced a translation of the EMDR protocol in Farsi (Persian). In her dissertation she tells how she found psychologists in Iran to help with the translation, and to use the EMDR protocol in their field work in earthquake devastated regions of Iran. The psychologists also filled out a survey assessing the value of the translation, and use of EMDR in Iran. She considers the possible problems using the treatment in a foreign culture and shows how it could be incorporated through a country-wide effort to train EMDR therapists at the village level throughout Iran. The dissertation also includes a publication from the journal Traumatology outlining a theory of the neural basis of EMDR. This theory has since been proven correct through her research with two colleagues using EEG recordings of patients undergoing EMDR therapy.

The evolution of cognitive psychology, traced from the beginnings of a rigorous experimental psychology at the end of the nineteenth century to the "cognitive revolution" at the end of the twentieth, and the social and cultural contexts of its theoretical developments. Modern psychology began with the adoption of experimental methods at the end of the nineteenth century: Wilhelm Wundt established the first formal laboratory in 1879; universities created independent chairs in psychology shortly thereafter; and William James published the landmark work Principles of Psychology in 1890. In A History of Modern Experimental Psychology, George Mandler traces the evolution of modern experimental and theoretical psychology from these beginnings to the "cognitive revolution" of the late twentieth century. Throughout, he emphasizes the social and cultural context, showing how different theoretical developments reflect the characteristics and values of the society in which they occurred. Thus, Gestalt psychology can be seen to mirror the changes in visual and intellectual culture at the turn of the century, behaviorism to embody the parochial and puritanical concerns of early twentieth-century America, and contemporary cognitive psychology as a product of the postwar revolution in information and communication. After discussing the meaning and history of the concept of mind, Mandler treats the history of the psychology of thought and memory from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, exploring, among other topics, the discovery of the unconscious, the destruction of psychology in Germany in the 1930s, and the relocation of the field's "center of gravity" to the United States. He then examines a more neglected part of the history of psychology-the emergence of a new and robust cognitive psychology under the umbrella of cognitive science.

This book takes up one of the hot topics in the field of Social Psychology: stereotypes and discrimination. Stereotypes and discrimination may occur due to ethnicity, religion, political stand, age, gender, and so forth. Of these, stereotyping and discrimination against women because of their gender has been a pervasive development problem over the globe. Most importantly, working women face this problem at two levels: in their community and at work place. Consequently, this has remained a top level challenge for any development endeavor to come true. Hence, in this book an attempt is made to portray the nature and types of gender based stereotypes and discrimination on women employees at workplace. Besides, this book brings in to the attention of readers quite a number of intervention strategies which can best fit to different contexts in lessening such a social pathology on women employees: stereotypes and discrimination.

Sentence processing reflects the influence of a variety of linguistic and psychological factors. Scholars have discussed both crosslinguistic universals of structural properties and the linear order of surface constituents as possible explanations of parsing preferences. Based on data from an experimental study of Korean adults' relative-clause comprehension and on a review of previous studies with Korean children and those with adult English speakers, this book addresses the independent and interacting effects of morphosyntax and prosody on parsing, the development of the parsing mechanism, and crosslinguistic similarities and differences in parsing. As sentence processing is the meeting point of linguistic competence and performance, the discussion should prove useful to students and researchers in psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science.

This work was undertaken with enthusiastic curiosity. In the course of reading thousands of neuroscience articles I have been hard pressed to understand what the EEG in the default network would look like when processing the self. In considering this ill-defined and often argued concept, the self must first be defined in its neurological components. Since the dawn of human language or even before there have been questions relating to existence and the meaning of life; however, in seeking these answers, the essence and meaning of the self has been neglected. Thus, we set out with very broad goals and hopefully this work will inspire other researchers and theorists to seek the self in the brain with as much interest and excitement as this project afforded me.

Reinstatement occurs when exposure to the unconditioned stimulus alone (i.e., context conditioning), after extinction, causes a recovery of responding to the conditioned stimulus. This model is frequently used as a research model of relapse for the treatment of drug abuse and anxiety disorders. Reinstatement of conditioned fear has been shown to depend on the hippocampal formation. The hippocampal formation has also been implicated in the acquisition and expression of contextual freezing. Two experiments examined the role of the hippocampus and two of its efferent targets, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) and nucleus accumbens, in two protocols for creating contextual freezing, and the reinstatement of conditioned fear in rats. The results of these experiments suggest that hippocampal-BST neural circuitry is critically involved in the reinstatement effect and the production of a state that is more like anxiety than fear.

Face recognition is a critical skill for our social adaptation; disorders of face recognition can impose very frustrating and embarrassing problems on the affected person. Although face recognition is usually an automatic and effortless process for most of us, it entails very complex neural computations, most of which are still beyond our knowledge. This book presents review of recent scientific findings on face recognition and prosopagnosia (face-blindness) and psychophysical studies that were conducted with human observers including individuals with prosopagnosia. These studies have investigated the manner in which faces are represented in the visual system under changes in viewpoint and image size. Using unique methods including synthetic faces, the present work has extended the findings of previous studies and provided insight into the neural mechanisms that underlie face processing and prosopagnosia. Face recognition is a promising venue of scientific and clinical investigations and offers a wide range of commercial, security and law enforcement applications. The reader should be somewhat familiar with psychophysical methods.

Hormones such as testosterone and estrogen help sculpt the nervous system throughout life, from early development through old age. Around the time of birth, these hormones can decide which neurons die off (or live) preferentially in males and which die off (or live) more in females. Later, in adulthood, testosterone no longer determines neuronal survival, but does regulate aspects of neuronal morphology, including cell size. Work outlined in this book explores the role of testosterone and the Bcl-2 family of proteins in regulating both neuronal death during development and neuronal morphology in adulthood in males and females. This investigation will help researchers studying the mechanism of sexual differentiation as well as anyone interested in exactly how the nervous system of males and females comes to be different.

The rated distinctiveness of a face, the orientation in which a face is seen and the race of the face, are all factors that are known to affect subsequent recognition of faces. These three factors are known as the distinctiveness effect, the orientation effect and the own-race bias. The main objective of this study was to track the extent to which these three effects develop across the lifespan. The study consisted of three experiments. Overall, the distinctiveness effect, inversion effect and own- race bias was evident among participants who were older than 8 years. Six-year-olds did not show a bias towards recognising distinctive, upright or own- race faces. Also, the own-race bias continued to affect the white subject's ability to recognise faces as they became older but this was not the case for black subjects.

Visual perception relies on both selective and constructive perceptual processes. For example, binocular rivalry leads to the selective perception of one of two competing monocular stimuli, whereas visual phantom formation leads to perceptual filling-in of a large gap between two collinearly aligned gratings. This book explores the role of perceptual and attentional mechanisms in binocular rivalry and perceptual filling-in, and investigates the neural interactions between rivalry and filling-in to gain new insights into the nature of these perceptual phenomena. These studies provide compelling new evidence suggesting that the neural mechanisms underlying selective perception and constructive perception both operate at early stages of visual processing, and that dynamic interactions can take place between these mechanisms at these same early sites. Moreover, the mechanistic approach, which this book takes to study visual awareness, is more promising to help us understand how consciousness arises as a consequence of brain activity than merely searching for the neural correlates of consciousness.

Eight experiments were conducted using a suite of insight problems including the cheap necklace problem (CNP), 8-ball, and 9-dot. A set of experiments investigated the effects of two hints derived from two contemporary theoretical accounts of insight-Criterion for Satisfactory Progress theory (CSP) and Representational Change Theory (RCT). Fewer participants in the CSP condition used maximizing moves. They required fewer trials to reach solution in the CSP. The second set of experiments investigated metacognition in the form of feelings-of-warmth (FOW) ratings for each move in insight. The microstructure of problem-solving lent support to CSP while the macrostructure lent support to RCT. The highest ratings corresponded to maximizing moves showing apparent progress supporting the CSP theory. An experiment controlled look-ahead by limiting the time to judge each move in a sequence of moves in the CNP. Partial support was found for the CSP theory. CSP and RCT are not necessarily incompatible. The last set of experiments found correlations among problem solving ability, look-ahead ability, fluid intelligence, working memory, and practice.

This book summarizes a series of research projects investigating the effects of self-handicapping on an individual's daily life by looking at participants' peer relationship and social interactions, reactions of peers to self-handicapping behaviors, and self-presentation strategies. Self-handicapping, when disclosed to peers, was predicted by previous research to negatively affect social networks. The series of studies presented in this book illustrates that the effect of self-handicapping on peer relationships is not nearly as straightforward as previous research might suggest and not universally negative. Self-handicappers were found, in comparison to low self-handicappers to have more friends with whom less close relationships were maintained. Self-handicappers were also found to spend, compared with low self-handicappers, a greater amount of time engaged in social activities with others(particularly with males). Finally, self-handicapping as a behavior was displayed very differently depending upon the presence and gender of others and this change in display impacted the perception others formed regarding the behavior.