First published in 1973. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume is divided into two parts with an extensive introduction presenting a selective history of the attempts to change cognitive abilities. The first part deals with programs which have attempted to raise IQ by intensive intervention. The second part focuses on attempts to improve specific cognitive skills. The authors represent a diverse segment of scientists concerned with the improvements of intellectual functioning.

This volume develops a comprehensive framework for applying the theory of hauntology to everyday life from ethnographic and clinical points of view. The central argument of the book is that all human experience is fundamentally haunted, and that a shift from ontological theory of subjective experience to a hauntological one is necessary and has urgent implications. Building on the notion of hauntology outlined by Derrida, the discussions are developed within the frameworks of psychoanalytic theory, specifically Jacques Lacan's object relational theory of ego development and his structural reading of Freud's theory of the psychic apparatus and its dynamics; along with the Hegelian ontology of the negative and its later modifications by 20th century philosophers such as Heidegger and Derrida; and the semiotics of difference introduced by Saussure and worked by Jakobson and others. This book argues and demonstrates the immediate relevance of hauntological analysis in everyday life by providing a microanalysis of the roles played by power, meaning and desire; and by using vignettes and data from ethnographic research and clinical settings, as well as references to literature, movies and other cultural products.

Restoring the Human Context to Literary and Performance Studies argues that much of contemporary literary theory is still predicated, at least implicitly, on outdated linguistic and psychological models such as post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism, which significantly contradict current dominant scientific views. By contrast, this monograph promotes an alternative paradigm for literary studies, namely Contextualism, and in so doing highlights the similarities and differences among the sometimes-conflicting contemporary cognitive approaches to literature and performance, arguing not in favor of one over the other but for Contextualism as their common ground.

A broad range of current experimental research on numerical cognition and the acquisition of mathematical skills is covered in this volume. The individual chapters provide in-depth analysis of specific issues, methodologies, phenomena, and theory. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part the focus is on the acquisition and development of numerical skills. Part 2 of the book contains research on the information-processing basis of numerical skills, focusing on the mechanisms of perception, attention, and memory that support number skills.

The range of theoretical and methodological orientations represented in the volume captures both the diversity and coherence of contemporary research into mathematical skills. The research of educational psychologists, cognitive psychologists, and cognitive neuropsychologists mutually informs and reinforces theoretical developments within each area. The multidisciplinary interest in mathematics skills reflects the pervasiveness and importance of mathematics in education, technology, and science, and also indicates that questions about mathematical competence address important issues in diverse areas of psychology and cognitive science.

An exciting new science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline. 'Fascinating' Daily Mail Throughout our lives, we are always looking for ways to keep our mind sharp and effortlessly productive. In this book, globetrotting neurosurgeon Dr Sanjay Gupta offers insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting edge research can help you heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age. Keep Sharp debunks common myths about ageing and cognitive decline, explores whether there's a 'best' diet or exercise regimen for the brain, and explains whether it's healthier to play video games that test memory and processing speed, or to engage in more social interaction. Discover what we can learn from 'super-brained' people who are in their eighties and nineties but showing no signs of slowing down - and whether there are truly any benefits to drugs, supplements and vitamins. Dr Gupta also addresses brain disease, particularly Alzheimer's, answers all your questions about signs and symptoms, and shows you both how to ward against it and how to care for a partner in cognitive decline. The book also provides readers with a personalized twelve-week programme featuring practical strategies to strengthen your brain every day. Keep Sharp is the only owner's manual you'll need to keep your brain young and healthy at any age!

This monograph presents innovative research regarding the body experience of human individuals who are using assistive robotic devices such as wearable robots or teleoperation systems. The focus is set on human-in-the-loop experiments that help to empirically evaluate how users experience devices. Moreover, these experiments allow for further examination of the underlying mechanisms of body experience through extending existing psychological paradigms, e.g., by disentangling tactile feedback from contacts. Besides reporting and discussing psychological examinations, the influence of various aspects of engineering design is investigated, e.g., different implementations of haptic interfaces or robot control. As haptics are of paramount importance in this tight type of human-robot interaction, it is explored with respect to modality as well as temporal and spatial effects. The first part of the book motivates the research topic and gives an in-depth analysis of the experimental requirements. The second and third part present experimental designs and studies of human-robot body experience regarding the upper and lower limbs as well as cognitive models to predict them. The fourth part discusses a multitude of design considerations and provides directions to guide future research on bidirectional human-machine interfaces and non-functional haptic feedback.

The new field of experimental philosophy has emerged as the methods of psychological science have been brought to bear on traditional philosophical issues. Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy will be the place to go to see outstanding new work in the field. It will feature papers by philosophers, papers by psychologists, and papers co-authored by people in both disciplines. The series heralds the emergence of a truly interdisciplinary field in which people from different disciplines are working together to address a shared set of questions.
The inaugural volume is roughly structured into four sections. The first three papers focus on recent developments in moral psychology, a topic that has seen lively debate and a great deal of progress over the last decade. The second section highlights three contributions that bring new methods to moral psychology: formal modeling and special populations. The third section brings together four papers that adopt an experimental philosophy approach to novel topics, including intuitive dualism, generics, joint action, and happiness. And the last two papers provide critical and historical context to the development of experimental philosophy.

This handbook on human multitasking provides an integrative overview on simultaneous and sequential multitasking and thus combines theorizing on dual task limitations as well as costs related to task switching. In addition to a wide range of empirical findings and their theoretical integration, the editors provide a number of applications of multitasking, like training, interindividual differences and applied research in traffic and health psychology and music expertise. The book is suitable for people interested in multitasking, that is, for researchers and graduate students of cognitive psychology, movement science, sport psychology, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive and neurological rehabilitation, aging sciences, and broader cognitive science.

The classic study of the creative process from the national bestselling author of Flow

creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reveals what leads to these moments--be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab--so that this knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on nearly one hundred interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists, to politicians and business leaders, to poets and artists, as well as his thirty years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous flow theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the "tortured genius" is largely a myth. Most important, he explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

Humans have a unique ability to understand the beliefs, emotions, and intentions of others-a capacity often referred to as mentalizing. Much research in psychology and neuroscience has focused on delineating the mechanisms of mentalizing, and examining the role of mentalizing processes in other domains of cognitive and affective functioning. The purpose of the book is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current research on the mechanisms of mentalizing at the neural, algorithmic, and computational levels of analysis. The book includes contributions from prominent researchers in the field of social-cognitive and affective neuroscience, as well as from related disciplines (e.g., cognitive, social, developmental and clinical psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, primatology). The contributors review their latest research in order to compile an authoritative source of knowledge on the psychological and brain bases of the unique human capacity to think about the mental states of others. The intended audience is researchers and students in the fields of social-cognitive and affective neuroscience and related disciplines such as neuroeconomics, cognitive neuroscience, developmental neuroscience, social cognition, social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and affective science. Secondary audiences include researchers in decision science (economics, judgment and decision-making), philosophy of mind, and psychiatry.

This edited book offers a broad selection of interdisciplinary studies within cognitive science. The book illustrates and documents how cognitive science offers a unifying framework for the interaction of fields of study focusing on the human mind from linguistics and philosophy to psychology and the history of science. A selection of renowned contributors provides authoritative historical, theoretical and empirical perspectives on more than six decades of research with a special focus on the progress of cognitive science in Central Europe. Readers encounter a bird's eye view of geographical and linguistic diversity brought about by the cognitive revolution, as it is reflected in the writings of leading authors, many of whom are former students and collaborators of Csaba Pleh, a key figure of the cognitive turn in Central Europe, to whom this book is dedicated. The book appeals to students and researchers looking for the ways various approaches to the mind and the brain intersect.

Why do people behave in moral ways in some circumstances, but not in others? In order to account fully for morality, Dennis Krebs departs from traditional approaches to morality that suggest that children acquire morals through socialization, cultural indoctrination, and moral reasoning. He suggests that such approaches can be subsumed, refined, and revised gainfully within an evolutionary framework. Relying on evolutionary theory, Krebs offers an account of how notions of morality originated in the human species. He updates Darwin's early ideas about how dispositions to obey authority, to control antisocial urges, and to behave in altruistic and cooperative ways originated and evolved, then goes on to update Darwin's account of how humans acquired a moral sense.
Krebs explains why the theory of evolution does not dictate that all animals are selfish and immoral by nature. On the contrary, he argues that moral behaviors and moral judgments evolved to serve certain functions. Krebs examines theory and research on the evolution of primitive forms of prosocial conduct displayed by humans and other animals, then discusses the evolution of uniquely human prosocial behaviors. He describes how a sense of morality originated during the course of human evolution through strategic social interactions among members of small groups, and how it was expanded and refined in modern societies, explaining how this sense gives rise to culturally universal and culturally relative moral norms. Krebs argues that although humans' unique cognitive abilities endow them with the capacity to engage in sophisticated forms of moral reasoning, people rarely live up their potential in their everyday lives. Four conceptions of what it means to be a moral person are identified, with the conclusion that people are naturally inclined to meet the standards of each conception under certain conditions. The key to making the world a more moral place lies in creating environments in which good guys finish first and cheaters fail to prosper.

Statistical illiteracy can have an enormously negative impact on decision making. This volume of collected papers brings together applied and theoretical research on risks and decision making across the fields of medicine, psychology, and economics. Collectively, the essays demonstrate why the frame in which statistics are communicated is essential for broader understanding and sound decision making, and that understanding risks and uncertainty has wide-reaching implications for daily life. Gerd Gigerenzer provides a lucid review and catalog of concrete instances of heuristics, or rules of thumb, that people and animals rely on to make decisions under uncertainty, explaining why these are very often more rational than probability models. After a critical look at behavioral theories that do not model actual psychological processes, the book concludes with a call for a "heuristic revolution" that will enable us to understand the ecological rationality of both statistics and heuristics, and bring a dose of sanity to the study of rationality.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder affects approximately one person in 40 and causes great suffering. Effective treatments are available that can help many, and our understanding of the psychology, neurobiology, and clinical treatment of the disorder has advanced dramatically over the past 25 years. Nevertheless, much remains to be learned, and a substantial minority of patients benefit little even from the best treatments we have to offer today. This volume provides the first comprehensive summary of the state of the field, summarizing topics ranging from genetics and neurobiology through cognitive psychology, clinical treatment, related conditions, societal implications, and personal experiences of patients and clinicians. This book is unique in its comprehensive coverage that extends far beyond the realm of cognitive-behavioral therapy. As such it will serve as a valuable introduction to those new to the field, a fascinating resource for OCD suffers and their families, and an essential reference for students, clinicians, and researchers.

This volume aims to contribute to the integration of three traditions that have remained separate in psychology. Specifically, the developmental, the psychometric, and the cognitive tradition. In order to achieve this aim, the text deals with these three aspects of human knowing that have been the focus of one or more of the three traditions for many years. Answers are provided to questions such as the following: What is common to intelligence, mind, and reasoning? What is specific to each of these three aspects of human knowing? How does each of them affect the functioning and development of the other?

The chapters are organized into two parts. Part I focuses on intelligence and mind and has reasoning at the background. The papers in this part present new theories and methods that systematically attempt to bridge psychometric theories of intelligence with theories of cognitive development or information processing theories. Part II focuses on mind and reasoning and has intelligence at the background. The papers in this part develop models of reasoning and attempt to show how reasoning interacts with mind and intelligence. Two discussion chapters are also included. These highlight the convergences and the divergences of the various traditions as represented in the book.

Gertrudis Van de Vijver. Seminar of Logic and Epistemology University of Ghent Before being classified under the fashionable denominators of complexity and chaos, self-organization and autonomy were intensely inquired into in the cybernetic tradition. Despite all rejections that cybernetics has gone through in the second half of this century, today its importance is more and more recognized. Its decisive influence for connectionist theories, autopoietic and constructivist theories, for different forms of applied or experimental epistemology, is being more and more understood and generally accepted. It is mainly due to the success of connectionist models that we observe today a revival of interest for cybernetics. The 1943 article by McCulloch and Pitts is evidently a founding article. Cybernetics has however a much broader interest than the one linked to technical-mathematical details relevant to the construction of networks. For instance, the evolution from first to second order cybernetics, the ways of approaching biological and cognitive phenomena in the latter and the limits that were formulated there, are particularly meaningful to understand current developments and divergences in connectionism. A nuanced picture of cybernetic's history and its present state is therefore clearly epistemologically essential."

This book is designed to usher the reader into the realm of semiotic studies. It analyzes the most important approaches to semiotics as they have developed over the last hundred years out of philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and biology. As a science of sign processes, semiotics investigates all types of com munication and information exchange among human beings, animals, plants, internal systems of organisms, and machines. Thus it encompasses most of the subject areas of the arts and the social sciences, as well as those of biology and medicine. Semiotic inquiry into the conditions, functions, and structures of sign processes is older than anyone scientific discipline. As a result, it is able to make the underlying unity of these disciplines apparent once again without impairing their function as specializations. Semiotics is, above all, research into the theoretical foundations of sign oriented disciplines: that is, it is General Semiotics. Under the name of Zei chenlehre, it has been pursued in the German-speaking countries since the age of the Enlightenment. During the nineteenth century, the systematic inquiry into the functioning of signs was superseded by historical investigations into the origins of signs. This opposition was overcome in the first half of the twentieth century by American Semiotic as well as by various directions of European structuralism working in the tradition of Semiology. Present-day General Semiot ics builds on all these developments."

This Handbook is a comprehensive volume outlining the foremost issues regarding research and teaching of second language speaking, examining such diverse topics as cognitive processing, articulation, knowledge of pragmatics, instruction in sub-components of speaking (e.g., grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary) and the attrition of the first language. Outstanding academics have contributed chapters to provide an integrated and inclusive perspective on oral language skills. Specialized contexts for speaking are also explored (e.g., English as a Lingua Franca, workplace, and interpreting). The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Speaking will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars in applied linguistics, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and education.

Contemporary philosophy of perception typically focuses on discussions concerning the content and the phenomenology of perceptual experience. In a significant departure from this tradition, The Ontology of Perceptual Experience explores the very conscious phenomena to which intentional or phenomenal features are thus ascribed. Drawing on a new wave of research- including the work of maverick philosophers like Helen Steward, Brian O'Shaughnessy, and Matthew Soteriou-this book examines two ways of categorizing perceptual experiences in accordance to their dynamic structure: on the one hand, Experiential Heracliteanism, an approach striving to describe perceptual experiences in terms of irreducibly dynamic components; and, on the other, Experiential Non-Heracliteanism, which conceives perceptual experiences as dynamic phenomena that may nevertheless be described in terms of non-dynamic elements. Sebastian Sanhueza Rodriguez describes both proposals and makes a modest case on behalf of the Non-Heraclitean approach against its increasingly popular Heraclitean counterpart. This case crucially turns on the fact that the Heracliteanist engages in a controversial and perhaps unnecessary commitment to irreducibly dynamic processes. The ontological framework this book unpacks offers a platform from which traditional issues in the philosophies of mind and perception may be revisited in refreshing and potentially fruitful ways.

Well known for applying mindfulness to the treatment of depression, pioneering researcher John Teasdale now explores the broader changes that people can experience through contemplative practices. What goes on in our minds when we are mindful? What does it mean to talk of mindfulness as a way of being? From a scientific perspective, how do core elements of contemplative traditions have their beneficial effects? Teasdale describes two types of knowing that human beings have evolved--conceptual and holistic-intuitive--and shows how mindfulness can achieve a healthier balance between them. He masterfully describes the mechanisms by which this shift in consciousness not only can reduce emotional suffering, but also can lead to greater joy and compassion and a transformed sense of self.

This edited volume examines the new ways of conceptualizing Psychology as an integrative science to understand human problems at the individual, group, societal, and national levels. It focuses on the need for Psychology to move away from its present reductionist perspective to an integrative psychological science perspective. The volume is organized into three main sections: The first discusses the convergence of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches in Psychology. The second part highlights the importance of social and personal wellness. The third focuses on studying human behaviour in the context of cultural variations and the impact of cultural context on psychological processes. The book includes contributions from leading scholars in psychology in India whose reference to practical, social and political issues of contemporary interest makes the volume stand out. This book serves as a resource to initiate the dialogue about the need, issues, levels, and integration methods in Psychology, which can be scientifically tested and theoretically explained. The comprehensive and authoritative volume is of interest to researchers and scholars in cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, organizational psychology, social psychology and cross-cultural psychology.

This volume emphasizes the role of chemical education for development and, in particular, for sustainable development in Africa, by sharing experiences among specialists across the African continent and with specialists from other continents. It considers all areas and levels of chemistry education, gives specific attention to known major challenges and encourages explorations of novel approaches. The chapters in this book describe new teaching approaches, approach-explorations and in-class activities, analyse educational challenges and possible ways of addressing them and explore cross-discipline possibilities and their potential benefits for chemistry education. This makes the volume an up to date compendium for chemistry educators and educational researchers worldwide.

The cognitive science of religion is an inherently heterogeneous subject, incorporating theory and data from anthropology, psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, and philosophy of mind amongst other subjects. One increasingly influential area of research in this field is concerned specifically with exploring the relationship between the evolution of the human mind, the evolution of culture in general, and the origins and subsequent development of religion. This research has exerted a strong influence on many areas of religious studies over the last twenty years, but, for some, the so-called 'evolutionary cognitive science of religion' remains a deeply problematic enterprise. This book's primary aim is to engage critically and constructively with this complex and diverse body of research from a wide range of perspectives. To these ends, the book brings together authors from a variety of relevant disciplines, in the thorough exploration of many of the key debates in the field. These include, for example: can certain aspects of religion be considered adaptive, or are they evolutionary by-products? Is the evolutionary cognitive science of religion compatible with theism? Is the evolutionary cognitive approach compatible with other, more traditional approaches to the study of religion? To what extent is religion shaped by cultural evolutionary processes? Is the evolutionary account of the mind that underpins the evolutionary cognitive approach the best or only available account? Written in accessible language, with an introductory chapter by Ilkka Pyssiainen, a leading scholar in the field, this book is a valuable resource for specialists, undergraduate and graduate students, and newcomers to the evolutionary cognitive science of religion.