The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing, Volume I: Development introduces the many voices necessary to better understand the act of singing-a complex human behaviour that emerges without deliberate training. Presenting research from the social sciences and humanities alongside that of the natural sciences and medicine alike, this companion explores the relationship between hearing sensitivity and vocal production, in turn identifying how singing is integrated with sensory and cognitive systems while investigating the ways we test and measure singing ability and development. Contributors consider the development of singing within the context of the entire lifespan, focusing on its cognitive, social, and emotional significance in four parts: Musical, historical and scientific foundations Perception and production Multimodality Assessment In 2009, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded a seven-year major collaborative research initiative known as Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing (AIRS). Together, global researchers from a broad range of disciplines addressed three challenging questions: How does singing develop in every human being? How should singing be taught and used to teach? How does singing impact wellbeing? Across three volumes, The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing consolidates the findings of each of these three questions, defining the current state of theory and research in the field. Volume I: Development tackles the first of these three questions, tracking development from infancy through childhood to adult years.

The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing, Volume III: Wellbeing explores the connections between singing and health, promoting the power of singing-in public policy and in practice-in confronting health challenges across the lifespan. These chapters shape an interdisciplinary research agenda that advances singing's theoretical, empirical, and applied contributions, providing methodologies that reflect individual and cultural diversities. Contributors assess the current state of knowledge and present opportunities for discovery in three parts: Singing and Health Singing and Cultural Understanding Singing and Intergenerational Understanding In 2009, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded a seven-year major collaborative research initiative known as Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing (AIRS). Together, global researchers from a broad range of disciplines addressed three challenging questions: How does singing develop in every human being? How should singing be taught and used to teach? How does singing impact wellbeing? Across three volumes, The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing consolidates the findings of each of these three questions, defining the current state of theory and research in the field. Volume III: Wellbeing focuses on this third question and the health benefits of singing, singing praises for its effects on wellbeing.

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."

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.

Cognitive psychology has matured and flourished in the last half-century, as new theories, research tools, and theoretical frameworks have allowed cognitive psychologists and researchers to explore a broad array of topics. In the same vein, the depth of understanding and the methodological and theoretical sophistication have also grown in wonderful ways. Given the expanse of the field, an up-to-date and inclusive resource such as this handbook is needed for aspiring generalists who wish to read the book cover to cover, and for the many readers who are simply curious to know the current happenings in other cognition laboratories. Guided by this need, this volume's 64 chapters cover all aspects of cognition, spanning perceptual issues, attention, memory, knowledge representation, language, emotional influences, judgment, problem solving, and the study of individual differences in cognition. Additional chapters turn to the control of complex actions and the social, cultural, and developmental context of cognition. The authors include a mix of well-established influential figures and younger colleagues in order to gain an understanding of the field's forward trajectory. The volume also includes a mix of "tutorial" chapters and chapters that powerfully represent a particular research team's point of view.

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.

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.

Unlike the competing texts, which focus on luxury branding and marketing, this book considers luxury from a strategic decision-making, creative and competitive perspective; Each chapter is illustrated by cases and examples from well-known international luxury firms, as well as chapter objectives, summaries, and reflective questions; Provides a framework to understand and assess value creation when creativity is relevant

The Roots of Cognitive Neuroscience takes a close look at what we can learn about our minds from how brain damage impairs our cognitive and emotional systems. This approach has a long and rich tradition dating back to the 19th century. With the rise of new technologies, such as functional neuroimaging and non-invasive brain stimulation, interest in mind-brain connections among scientists and the lay public has grown exponentially. Behavioral neurology and neuropsychology offer critical insights into the neuronal implementation of large-scale cognitive and affective systems. The book starts out by making a strong case for the role of single case studies as a way to generate new hypotheses and advance the field. This chapter is followed by a review of work done before the First World War demonstrating that the theoretical issues that investigators faced then remain fundamentally relevant to contemporary cognitive neuroscientists. The rest of the book covers central topics in cognitive neuroscience including the nature of memory, language, perception, attention, motor control, body representations, the self, emotions, and pharmacology. There are chapters on modeling and neuronal plasticity as well as on visual art and creativity. Each of these chapters take pains to clarify how this research strategy informs our understanding of these large scale systems by scrutinizing the systematic nature of their breakdown. Taken together, the chapters show that the roots of cognitive neuroscience, behavioral neurology and neuropsychology, continue to ground our understanding of the biology of mind and are as important today as they were 150 years ago.

This book presents a new approach to understanding the history and practice of cognitive-behavior therapy by presenting country profiles in 38 countries located around the world. The objectives of this edited volume are to provide a broad understanding of the practice of CBT internationally as well as country specific practices that will provide researchers and practitioners with important information for consideration in the application of CBT. The book begins with an introductory chapter by the editors that discusses the history of CBT and the efforts to globalize and disseminate the science and practice of CBT as well as the unique cultural and international variables. The subsequent chapters offer detailed country profiles of the history and practice of CBT from around the globe. More specifically, chapters will provide an overview of the country, a history of psychotherapy in the country, current regulations regarding psychotherapy provision, professional and cognitive behavior therapy organizations, training opportunities/programs in CBT, populations most frequently worked with using CBT in the country, the use and adaptation of CBT, the research on CBT in the country, and CBT with special populations (children, immigrants, HIV+, etc). Many of the nations represented are the most populous and influential ones in their respective regions where CBT has been incorporated into psychotherapy training and practice. Taken as a whole, the countries are quite diverse in terms of sociocultural, economic, and political conditions and the impact of these variables on the practice of CBT in the country will be discussed. The final chapter of the volume offers a summary of the patterns of practice, integrating the main findings and challenges and discussing them within a global context. A discussion of the vision for next steps in the globalization of CBT concludes the book.

We all hear voices. Ordinary thinking is often a kind of conversation, filling our heads with speech: the voices of reason, of memory, of self-encouragement and rebuke, the inner dialogue that helps us with tough decisions or complicated problems. For others - voice-hearers, trauma-sufferers and prophets - the voices seem to come from outside: friendly voices, malicious ones, the voice of God or the Devil, the muses of art and literature. In The Voices Within, Royal Society Prize shortlisted psychologist Charles Fernyhough draws on extensive original research and a wealth of cultural touchpoints to reveal the workings of our inner voices, and how those voices link to creativity and development. From Virginia Woolf to the modern Hearing Voices Movement, Fernyhough also transforms our understanding of voice-hearers past and present. Building on the latest theories, including the new 'dialogic thinking' model, and employing state-of-the-art neuroimaging and other ground-breaking research techniques, Fernyhough has written an authoritative and engaging guide to the voices in our heads. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

In the last decade, a great variety and volume of scholarly work has appeared on mind-wandering, a mental process involving a vast range of human life, connected with "first-person perspective" and "personhood", submental thinking, mental autonomy, etc. While different and emerging features that flow into and out of one another (second field, mental travel, visual imagery, inner speech, unspecific memory, autobiographical memory, fantasies, introspection, etc.) and negative and positive approaches seem to describe mind-wandering, we offer an interdisciplinary theoretical and empirically informed and informative overview on mind-wandering studies and methodologies oriented toward the educational field. The aim is to transform and enrich the debate on mind-wandering but also to show how theoretical arguments and research findings could inform the teaching-learning context. This groundbreaking book, moves along three representations of developed scientific knowledge: imaginary lines, circles and spirals. The first section, "The Lines", develops new lines of inquiry on attention (selective and sustained) and mind-wandering, the influence of age and mind-wandering, embodiment, consciousness and experience and mind-wandering. In the second section, the "Circles", groups of Chapters on the same topic, methodology (tasks and measurement), intervention (auditory beat stimulation and mindfulness practices) and creativity, recreate a dance of interacting parts in which there are always profitable, decisive and retroactive exchanges between the information that each group or author activates. The last section, "The Spirals", critically discusses the absence of a unified theoretical perspective, in the pedagogical field, attentive both to the processes of emergence and the interactions between parts.

This is the second volume in the Vancouver studies in Cognitive Science series, and also the second in a series of conferences hosted by the Cognitive Science Programme at Simon Fraser University devoted to the exploration of issues in cognition and the nature of mental representation. The volumes overall theme is the relationship between the contents of grammatical formalisms and their real-time realizations in machine or biological systems. The range of topics includes issues of learnability, implementary and computational issues, parameter setting, and neurolinguistic issues. The core subdisciplines of linguistics - syntax, semantics, morphology, and phonology - are all represented. The contributions are on the leading edge of research in these fields.

This work brings together different perspectives on psychological methods and particularly methods involving experimentation. To encourage a reflective use of research methods, the authors illuminate the historical, philosophical, and scientific dimensions of methodology, providing both defenses and criticisms of experimental psychology. The primary audience of the work are students and researchers in psychological and behavioral sciences, who have an interest in methodology

This book assembles fifteen original, interdisciplinary research chapters that explore methodological and conceptual considerations as well as user and usage studies to elucidate the relation between the translation product and translation/post-editing processes. It introduces numerous innovative empirical/data-driven measures as well as novel classification schemes and taxonomies to investigate and quantify the relation between translation quality and translation effort in from-scratch translation, machine translation post-editing and computer-assisted audiovisual translation. The volume addresses questions in the translation of cognates, neologisms, metaphors, and idioms, as well as figurative and cultural specific expressions. It re-assesses the notion of translation universals and translation literality, elaborates on the definition of translation units and syntactic equivalence, and investigates the impact of translation ambiguity and translation entropy. The results and findings are interpreted in the context of psycho-linguistic models of bilingualism and re-frame empirical translation process research within the context of modern dynamic cognitive theories of the mind. The volume bridges the gap between translation process research and machine translation research. It appeals to students and researchers in the fields.

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.

The second edition of this book brings together a cutting edge international team of contributors to critically review the current knowledge regarding the effectiveness of training interventions designed to improve cognitive functions in different target populations. Since the publication of the first volume, the field of cognitive research has rapidly evolved. There is substantial evidence that cognitive and physical training can improve cognitive performance, but these benefits seem to vary as a function of the type and the intensity of interventions and the way training-induced gains are measured and analyzed. This book will address the new topics in psychological research and aims to resolve some of the currently debated issues. This book offers a comprehensive overview of empirical findings and methodological approaches of cognitive training research in different cognitive domains (memory, executive functions, etc.), types of training (working memory training, video game training, physical training, etc.), age groups (from children to young and older adults), target populations (children with developmental disorders, aging workers, MCI patients etc.), settings (laboratory-based studies, applied studies in clinical and educational settings), and methodological approaches (behavioral studies, neuroscientific studies). Chapters feature theoretical models that describe the mechanisms underlying training-induced cognitive and neural changes. Cognitive Training: An Overview of Features and Applications, Second Edition will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, students, and professors in the fields of psychology and neuroscience.

The Elements of Cognitive Aging provides a qualitative overview (mostly using graphical meta-analysis) of the vast literature on aging and speeded tasks-bringing together, for the first time, almost everything we know about aging and processing speed. The book investigates age-related slowing in elementary tasks (including updated parameters for the Aging Human Information Processor) and tasks of executive control (inhibition, task shifting, and task coordination). It examines regularities in the age-related effects of these tasks that might hint at underlying brain-related mechanisms, while having a keen eye for alternative explanations (such as increased caution with age). It models the course of speed-of-processing over the lifespan and investigates the influence of generational differences on mental speed. Finally, it examines the influence of age-related mental slowing on other aspects of cognition (working memory, executive control episodic memory, aspects of fluid intelligence), and provides the first systematic review of age-speed-cognition mediation in a longitudinal context.

In a 2005 editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian, Kant was declared "the undefeated heavyweight philosophy champion of the world" because he had the "insight ... to remove psychology from epistemology, arguing that knowledge is inevitably mediated by space, time and forms within our minds." This is an accurate reflection of the consensus view of philosophers and scientists that Kant's accounts of space, time, nature, mathematics, and logic on the Critique of Pure Reason are rationalist, normativist, and nativist. Here, Wayne Waxman argues that this is untrue. Kant neither asserted nor implied that Euclid and Newton are the final word in their respective sciences. Rather than supposing that the psyche derives its fundamental forms from epistemology, he traced the first principles of ordinary, scientific, mathematical, and even logical knowledge to the psyche. Aristotelean logic, in particular, exhausts the sphere of the logical for Kant precisely because he deduced it entirely from psychological principles of the unity of consciousness, resulting in a demarcation of logic from mathematics that would set virtually everything regarded as logic today on the mathematical side of the ledger. Although Kant derived his conception of the unity of consciousness from Descartes, he gave it new life by eliminating its epistemological and metaphysical baggage, reducing it to its logical essence, and grounding what remained on a wholly original conception of the a priori unity of sensibility. Thus, far from departing from the course charted by British Empiricism, Kant's anatomy of the understanding is continuous with, indeed the culmination of, the psychologization of philosophy initiated by Locke, advanced by Berkeley, and developed to its empirical outrance by Hume. "This is a superb and very important book. It is certainly one of the best books written on Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason." -Klaus Steigleder, Professor of Applied Ethics, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum.

In Question and Insight in Everyday Life: A Blueprint for Transformative Problem Solving, Richard Grallo examines the nature and patterns of human problem solving. Grallo identifies four patterns of problem solving that together result in complex human learning and growth. The four patterns constitute a cycle that is transformative not only of problematic situations but of the problem solvers themselves. The book also explores the roles of questions, insights, the desire to know, and social trust in problem solving. The book's conclusions apply equally to the problems of everyday life as well as to challenges that arise in educational, counseling, political, engineering, and science fields.

This book considers how people talk about their environment, find their way in new surroundings, and plan routes. Part I explores the empirical insights gained from research in the cognitive underpinnings of spatial representation in language. Part II proposes solutions for capturing such insights formally, and in Part III authors discuss how theory is put into practice through spatial assistance systems. These three perspectives stem from research disciplines which deal with the spatial domain in different ways, and which often remain separate. In this book they are combined so as to highlight both the state of the art in the field and the benefit of building bridges between methodologies and disciplines. Finding our way and planning routes is relevant to us all; this book ultimately helps improve our everyday lives.

A new theory is taking hold in neuroscience. It is the theory that the brain is essentially a hypothesis-testing mechanism, one that attempts to minimise the error of its predictions about the sensory input it receives from the world. It is an attractive theory because powerful theoretical arguments support it, and yet it is at heart stunningly simple. Jakob Hohwy explains and explores this theory from the perspective of cognitive science and philosophy. The key argument throughout The Predictive Mind is that the mechanism explains the rich, deep, and multifaceted character of our conscious perception. It also gives a unified account of how perception is sculpted by attention, and how it depends on action. The mind is revealed as having a fragile and indirect relation to the world. Though we are deeply in tune with the world we are also strangely distanced from it. The first part of the book sets out how the theory enables rich, layered perception. The theory's probabilistic and statistical foundations are explained using examples from empirical research and analogies to different forms of inference. The second part uses the simple mechanism in an explanation of problematic cases of how we manage to represent, and sometimes misrepresent, the world in health as well as in mental illness. The third part looks into the mind, and shows how the theory accounts for attention, conscious unity, introspection, self and the privacy of our mental world.

Consumers routinely enter into long-term contracts with providers of goods and services - from credit cards, mortgages, cell phones, insurance, TV, and internet services to household appliances, theatre and sports events, health clubs, magazine subscriptions, transportation, and more. Across these consumer markets certain design features of contracts are recurrent, and puzzling. Why do sellers design contracts to provide short-term benefits and impose long-term costs? Why are low introductory prices so common? Why are the contracts themselves so complex, with numerous fees and interest rates, tariffs and penalties? Seduction by Contract explains how consumer contracts emerge from the interaction between market forces and consumer psychology. Consumers are short-sighted and optimistic, so sellers compete to offer short-term benefits, while imposing long-term costs. Consumers are imperfectly rational, so sellers hide the true costs of products and services in complex contracts. Consumers are seduced by contracts that increase perceived benefits, without actually providing more benefits, and decrease perceived costs, without actually reducing the costs that consumers ultimately bear. Competition does not help this behavioural market failure. It may even exacerbate it. Sellers, operating in a competitive market, have no choice but to align contract design with the psychology of consumers. A high-road seller who offers what she knows to be the best contract will lose business to the low-road seller who offers what the consumer mistakenly believes to be the best contract. Put bluntly, competition forces sellers to exploit the biases and misperceptions of their customers. Seduction by Contract argues that better legal policy can help consumers and enhance market efficiency. Disclosure mandates provide a promising avenue for regulatory intervention. Simple, aggregate disclosures can help consumers make better choices. Comprehensive disclosures can facilitate the work of intermediaries, enabling them to better advise consumers. Effective disclosure would expose the seductive nature of consumer contracts and, as a result, reduce sellers' incentives to write inefficient contracts. Developing its explanation through a general framework and detailed case studies of three major consumer markets (credit cards, mortgages, and cell phones), Seduction by Contract is an accessible introduction to the law and economics of consumer contracts, and a powerful critique of current regulatory policy.