The book presents the state-of-the-art in major aspects of text analysis and cognitive text processing by some of the most well-known European and American researchers in the field of text-linguistics and cognitive psychology. Comprehensive views and new perspectives are proposed in the following topics: cognitive and metacognitive aspects of text processing, structures and processes involved in the construction of multi-level semantic representations in relation with text and reader characteristics, achievement of local and global coherence of meaning during reading and comprehension, assessment of knowledge, knowledge acquisition of concepts and complex systems by text, and cognitive and metacognitive aspects of text production.

This book provides an introduction and overview of the rapidly evolving topic of game user experience, presenting the new perspectives employed by researchers and the industry, and highlighting the recent empirical findings that illustrate the nature of it. The first section deals with cognition and player psychology, the second section includes new research on modeling and measuring player experience, the third section focuses on the impact of game user experience on game design processes and game development cycles, the fourth section presents player experience case studies on contemporary computer games, and the final section demonstrates the evolution of game user experience in the new era of VR and AR. The book is suitable for students and professionals with different disciplinary backgrounds such as computer science, game design, software engineering, psychology, interactive media, and many others.

In understanding human behavior, psychologists have long been interested in what motivates specific actions. Debates have pitted extrinsic motivators (e.g. rewards/punishment) against intrinsic motivation in attempting to determine what best motivates individuals. This book provides a summary view of what research has determined about both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and clarifies what questions remain unanswered. Divided into three sections, section I revisits the debate about the effects of extrinsic incentives or constraints on intrinsic motivation and creativity, and identifies theoretical advances in motivational research. Section II focuses on the hidden costs and benefits of different types of achievement goals on motivation and performance. Section III discusses theory and research findings on how extrinsic and intrinsic motivators may work in everyday life and over time. This book is of interest to researchers in psychology, education, and business, as well as to a wider audience interested in promoting optimal motivation and performance.
Coverage in this book includes:
* Debates and controversies in motivational research
* Developmental nature of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation over time
* Influences of parents, educators, and employers in facilitating motivation
* Effect of achievement goals on learning and performance
* The role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in self-regulation
Key Features
* Brings together major figures in the fields of motivation, education, and social psychology
* Provides a mix of theory, basic and applied research
* Presents research conducted both in laboratories and educational settings
* Comprehensive chapters provide excellent reviews of previous literature as well as outlines important new directions
* Provides different perspectives on controversial debates in a balanced, constructive manner

The four authors of this book recognize that no one on the common human journey to the 21st century can pick the best route without consulting a map--that is to say, an interconnected set of understandings about what in a given situation is important, what demands action and attention, and what does not. The problem, they contend, is that the picture of the world we each carry in our mind may not be a true mapping of the reality that surrounds us. This picture, the cognitive map, could always be sharper. The authors prompt us to become more conscious of our own cognitive map, and explain how it can be adapted to the exigencies of our changing world so that it can be better-used to guide our steps toward the 21st century.

We all carry a picture of the world in our mind, but is that map an assuredly true layout of the reality that surrounds us? If not, how can we use it to guide our steps toward the 21st century and beyond without creating shocks and surprises that impair our well-being and threaten our survival?

We shall not survive, either as individuals or as a species, if our maps fail to reflect accurately the nature of the world that surrounds us. The authors attempt, through reviewing the origins, development, and current changes in individual and social cognitive maps, to prompt readers to become more conscious of their own map, and hence be better able to adapt it to the exigencies of our changing world. The book ends with a vision of the global bio- and socio-sphere: the unified cognitive map which is emerging in laboratories and workshops of the new physics, the new biology, the new ecology, and the avant-garde branches of the social and historical sciences. But "Changing Visions" recognizes that these sciences alone cannot promote the formation of faithful maps of lived reality, and that religion, common sense, and even art can fill in and sharpen one's world-picture.

At the heart of this book is one of the most ancient and profound question philosophers, spiritual seekers, and curious individuals have pondered since the beginning of history: "Who am I?". Advances in modern science, and access to Zen tradition, have provided us with broader and richer understanding of this topic. Over the chapters the author, a psychologist and Zen master, investigates how the brain fosters a sense of an independent self, situating his research in the contexts of neuroscience, ecology, evolution, psychology, and of the principles Eastern wisdom traditions. The book explores a broad range of insights from brain science, evolutionary biology, astronomy, clinical psychology, thoughts and emotions, mental health disorders, and Zen Buddhism. This book will appeal to psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, counsellors, and researchers of Eastern traditions. General readers interested in the functioning of the brain will discover practical ways to integrate fascinating new findings on an age-old question into their everyday life.

This book aims to reverse the bias shown in research literature concerning the decline of information processing abilities with age. Twenty chapters identify areas of limited or no decline in cognitive functioning with respect to rate of information processing, attentional capacity, object perception, word perception, language comprehension, learning, memory, and problem-solving. These findings attest to the imbalance of previous published research, presenting a fairer portrayal of the aged mind.
Key Features
* Investigates a broad variety of information-processing tasks and capabilities
* Shows that aging adults can look forward to minimum dysfunction over a wide range of intellectual activity
* Reverses the bias toward portrayal of the aged, dysfunctional mind
* Provides information applicable toward interacting with the aged in counseling and care-giving settings

This book proposes a groundbreaking approach to the study of personal creativity, linking this to the analysis of the chakras, or centers of energy, of the subtle system suggested by the Eastern philosophy called Sahaja Yoga. It argues that creativity is to be re-learnt through a process of self-review, a self-examination which is underpinned by the author's concept of the outsider to the self, a pervasive condition characterized by a tendency to be connected to the outer world at the expense of the inner world. The author analyses creativity from three different but interrelated aspects -the individual, society and education - and maps out a route that may take the individuals into an understanding of blockages in their creative process. It also examines aspects that have contributed to sustain the condition of the outsider to the self, hindering people's creativity. It argues that the traditional education system is both constricting and releasing factor of creativity. Finally, through the use of auto-ethnography, the author reveals a process of blocked and unblocked creativity. This book is a key read for all those interested in psychology, sociology, education and cultural studies.

How Creativity Happens In The Brain is about the brain mechanisms of creativity, how a grapefruit-sized heap of meat crackling with electricity manages to be so outrageously creative. It has a sharp focus: to stick exclusively to sound, mechanistic explanations and convey what we can, and cannot, say about how brains give rise to creative ideas.

This edited volume focuses on different views of happiness and well-being, considering constructs like meaning and spirituality in addition to the more standard constructs of positive emotion and life satisfaction. A premise of the volume is that being happy consists of more than having the right things happen to us; it also depends on how we interpret those events as well as what we are trying to achieve. Such considerations suggest that cognitive-emotional factors should play a fairly pronounced role in how happy we are. The present volume pursues these themes in the context of 25 chapters organized into 5 sections. The first section centers on cognitive variables such as attention and executive function, in addition to mindfulness. The second section considers important sources of positive cognition such as savoring and optimism and the third section focuses on self-regulatory contributions to well-being. Finally, social processes are covered in a fourth section and meaning-related processes are covered in the fifth. What results is a rich and diverse volume centering on the ways in which our minds can help or hinder our aspirations for happiness.

In this book the editors have gathered a number of contributions by persons who have been working on problems of Cognitive Technology (CT). The present collection initiates explorations of the human mind via the technologies the mind produces. These explorations take as their point of departure the question What happens when humans produce new technologies? Two interdependent perspectives from which such a production can be approached are adopted:

- How and why constructs that have their origins in human mental life are embodied in physical environments when people fabricate their habitat, even to the point of those constructs becoming that very habitat

- How and why these fabricated habitats affect, and feed back into, human mental life.

The aim of the CT research programme is to determine, in general, which technologies, and in particular, which interactive computer-based technologies, are humane with respect to the cognitive development and evolutionary adaptation of their end users. But what does it really mean to be humane in a technological world? To shed light on this central issue other pertinent questions are raised, e.g.

- Why are human minds externalised, i.e., what purpose does the process of externalisation serve?

- What can we learn about the human mind by studying how it externalises itself?

- How does the use of externalised mental constructs (the objects we call 'tools') change people fundamentally?

- To what extent does human interaction with technology serve as an amplification of human cognition, and to what extent does it lead to a atrophy of the human mind?

The book calls for a reflection on what a tool is. Strong parallels between CT andenvironmentalism are drawn: both are seen as trends having originated in our need to understand how we manipulate, by means of the tools we have created, our natural habitat consisting of, on the one hand, the cognitive environment which generates thought and determines action, and on the other hand, the physical environment in which thought and action are realised. Both trends endeavour to protect the human habitat from the unwanted or uncontrolled impact of technology, and are ultimately concerned with the ethics and aesthetics of tool design and tool use.

Among the topics selected by the contributors to the book, the following themes emerge (the list is not exhaustive): using technology to empower the cognitively impaired; the ethics versus aesthetics of technology; the externalisation of emotive and affective life and its special dialectic ('mirror') effects; creativity enhancement: cognitive space, problem tractability; externalisation of sensory life and mental imagery; the engineering and modelling aspects of externalised life; externalised communication channels and inner dialogue; externalised learning protocols; relevance analysis as a theoretical framework for cognitive technology.

This book examines how early modern and recently emerging theories of consciousness and cognitive science help us to re-imagine our engagements with Shakespeare in text and performance. Papers investigate the connections between states of mind, emotion, and sensation that constitute consciousness and the conditions of reception in our past and present encounters with Shakespeare's works. Acknowledging previous work on inwardness, self, self-consciousness, embodied self, emotions, character, and the mind-body problem, contributors consider consciousness from multiple new perspectives-as a phenomenological process, a materially determined product, a neurologically mediated reaction, or an internally synthesized identity-approaching Shakespeare's plays and associated cultural practices in surprising and innovative ways.

Diagrammatic reasoning is crucial for human cognition. It is hard to think of any forms of science or knowledge without the "intermediary world" of diagrams and diagrammatic representation in thought experiments and/or processes, manifested in forms as divers as notes, tables, schemata, graphs, drawings and maps. Despite their phenomenological and structural-functional differences, these forms of representation share a number of important attributes and epistemic functions. Combining aspects of linguistic and pictorial symbolism, diagrams go beyond the traditional distinction between language and image. They do not only represent, yet intervene in what is represented. Their spatiality, materiality and operativity establish a dynamic tool to exteriorize thinking, thus contributing to the idea of the extended mind. They foster imagination and problem solving, facilitate orientation in knowledge spaces and the discovery of unsuspected relationships. How can the diagrammatic nature of cognitive and knowledge practices be theorized historically as well as systematically? This is what this volume explores by investigating the semiotic dimension of diagrams as to knowledge, information and reasoning, e.g., the 'thing-ness' of diagrams in the history of art, the range of diagrammatic reasoning in logic, mathematics, philosophy and the sciences in general, including the knowledge function of maps.

A new text for positive psychology, this book places the self as the decision maker at the center of the motivational process. "Personal Motivation" represents a new approach for student and scholar to consider motivation theory, self theory, and decision theory. It supports current thinking, which sees the self as possessing power for growth and change. Challenging traditional motivation and personality theories, it puts personality within the context of a new motivation model. It also challenges current thinking by distinguishing between choosing and deciding, and by describing the various characteristics of decision making as uniquely human.

The self is reciprocally influenced by three motivational systems and is formed by the motivational process itself. A triarchic theory of motivation is proposed consisting of interdependent systems: formative, operational, and thematic. This book places the study of psychology back in the arena of life by developing a model of motivation and decision making immediately relevant to personal experience.

This book examines Gilles Deleuze's ideas about creativity in the context of lifelong learning, offering an original take on this important contemporary topic using cinematic parallels. Discussing Deleuze's difficult notion of 'counter-actualization' as a form of creative practice, it draws practical consequences for those across a diverse sector.

This book originated at a workshop by the same name held in May 2018 at the University of Pavia. The aim was to encourage a cross-disciplinary discussion on the limits of cognition. When venturing into cognitive science, notwithstanding the approach, one of the first riddles to be solved is the definition of cognition. Any definition immediately sparks the ascription debate: who/what cognizes? Definitions may appear either too loose, or too demanding. Are bacteria included? What about plants? Is it a human prerogative? We engage in the quest for artificial intelligence, but is artificial cognition already the case? And if it was a human prerogative, are we doing it all the time? Is cognition a process, or the sum of countless sub processes? Is it in the brain, or also in the body? Or does it go beyond the body? Where does it start? Where does it end? We tried answering these questions each from our own perspectives, as philosophers, ethnographers, psychologists and rhetoricians, handing each other our peculiar insight.

Previously published as "Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships."
PHILOSOPHERS, THEOLOGIANS, ARTISTS, AND BOY BANDS HAVE WAXED poetic for centuries about the nature of love. But what does the "brain "have to say about the way we carry our hearts? In the wake of a divorce, science writer and single mother Kayt Sukel made herself a guinea pig in the labs of some unusual love experts to find out. "This Is Your Brain on Sex "is her lively and hilarious examination of the big questions about love and sex, previously published in hardcover as "Dirty Minds."
Each chapter of this edgy romp through the romantic brain looks at a different aspect of love above the belt. What in your brain makes you love someone--or simply lust after them? Why do good girls like bad boys? Is monogamy practical? How thin is that line between love and hate? After reading this gimlet-eyed look at love, sex, and the brain, you'll never look at romance the same way again.

Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition aims to bring cognitive linguistics and linguistic anthropology closer together, calling for further investigations of language and culture from cognitively-informed perspectives against the backdrop of the current trend of linguistic anthropology.

'The Influence of Attention, Learning, and Motivation on Visual Search' will bring together distinguished authors who are conducting cutting edge research on the many factors that influence search behavior. These factors will include low-level feature detection; statistical learning; scene perception; neural mechanisms of attention; and applied research in real world settings.

This study examines the suffering narratives of the Bimo and Christian religious communities of the Yi minority who reside in the remote mountains of Sichuan and Yunnan, China, respectively. It is informed by the theoretical framework of ecological rationality, which posits that religions influence and are influenced by cognitive styles that have co-evolved with the ecological niche of a culture. It was predicted and found that in times of adversity, traditional religious communities differ in emotion expression, causal attribution, and help-seeking behavior, with far-reaching ramifications for how they are uniquely vulnerable to the ravages of modernization. The authors hope that the voices of the study participants, heard through their harrowing narratives, may inspire a deepened sensitivity to the plight of rural Chinese communities as China races to become a superpower in the global economy.