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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology > General
When one is immersed in the fascinating world of neuroscience
findings, the brain might start to seem like a collection of
"modules," each specializes in a specific mental feat. But just
like in other domains of Nature, it is possible that much of the
brain and mind's operation can be explained with a small set of
universal principles. Given exciting recent developments in theory,
empirical findings and computational studies, it seems that the
generation of predictions might be one strong candidate for such a
universal principle. This is the focus of Predictions in the brain.
From the predictions required when a rat navigates a maze to
food-caching in scrub-jays; from predictions essential in
decision-making to social interactions; from predictions in the
retina to the prefrontal cortex; and from predictions in early
development to foresight in non-humans.
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.
This volume examines two main questions: What is linguistics about? And how do the results of linguistic theorizing bear on inquiry in related fields, particularly in psychology? The book develops views that depart from received wisdom in both philosophy and linguistics. With regard to questions concerning the subject matter, methodological goals, and ontological commitments of formal syntactic theorizing, it argues that the cognitive conception adopted by most linguists and philosophers is not the only acceptable view, and that the arguments in its favor collapse under scrutiny. Nevertheless, as the book shows, a detailed examination of the relevant psycholinguistic results and computational models does support the claim that the theoretical constructs of formal linguistics are operative in real-time language comprehension. These constructs fall into two categories: mental phrase markers and mental syntactic principles. Both are indeed psychologically real, but in importantly different ways. The book concludes by drawing attention to the importance of the often-elided distinction between personal and subpersonal psychological states and processes, as well as the logical character of dispositional and occurrent states. By clarifying these concepts, particularly by reference to up-and-running psychological and computational models, the book yields a richer and more satisfying perspective on the psychological reality of language.
Prophecy is a key to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. In Prophetic Word Bank we share with you our gifts in the hope they will allow you to bring forth your own greatness. Prophetic Word Bank is where you will find the health, success and prosperity, faith and love you deserve.
This book proposes an applied epistemological framework for investigating science, social cognition and religious thinking based on inferential patterns that recur in the different domains. It presents human rationality as a tool that allows us to make sense of our (physical or social) surroundings. It shows that the resulting cognitive activity produces a broad spectrum of outputs, such as scientific models and experimentation, gossip and social networks, but also ancient and contemporary deities. The book consists of three parts, the first of which addresses scientific modeling and experimentation, and their application to the analysis of scientific rationality. Thus, this part continues the tradition of eco-cognitive epistemology and abduction studies. The second part deals with the relationship between social cognition and cognitive niche construction, i.e. the evolutionarily relevant externalization of knowledge onto the environment, while the third part focuses on what is commonly defined as "irrational", thus being in a way dialectically opposed to the first part. Here, the author demonstrates that the "irrational" can be analyzed by applying the same epistemological approach used to study scientific rationality and social cognition; also in this case, we see the emergence of patterns of rationality that regulate the relationships between agents and their environment. All in all, the book offers a coherent and unitary account of human rationality, providing a basis for new conceptual connections and theoretical speculations.
This book reflects on the significant and highly original scientific contributions of Hans Primas. A professor of chemistry at ETH Zurich from 1962 to 1995, Primas continued his research activities until his death in 2014. Over these 50 years and more, he worked on the foundations of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, contributed to a number of significant issues in theoretical chemistry, helped to clarify central topics in quantum theory and the philosophy of physics, suggested innovative ways of addressing interlevel relations in the philosophy of science, and introduced cutting-edge approaches in the flourishing young field of scientific studies of consciousness. His work in these areas of research and its continuing impact is described by noted experts, colleagues, and collaborators of Primas. All authors contextualize their contributions to facilitate the mutual dialog between these fields.
This volume collects the best and most influential essays on knowledge, rationality and morality that Stephen Stich has published in the last 40 years. All of the essays are concerned, in one way or another, with the ways in which findings and theories in the cognitive sciences can contribute to, and sometimes reshape traditional philosophical conversations and debates. A central theme in the essays on epistemology and rationality is the philosophical significance of empirical work on human reasoning done by researchers in the "heuristics and biases" tradition, and by their critics in evolutionary psychology. In the essays on morality, a wide range of empirical work is explored, including studies of the psychological foundations of norms, work on the moral / conventional distinction, and empirical attempts to determine whether humans ever act on altruistic motives. Stich was one of the pioneers in the experimental philosophy movement, and work in experimental philosophy plays a prominent role in many of these essays. The volume includes a new introductory essay that offers an overview of the papers and traces the history of how they emerged.
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.
N.N. Ladygina-Kohts earned her degree in comparative psychology at Moscow University in 1917, then became the first curator of the Darwin Museum in Moscow. Her pioneering work with the chimpanzee, Joni, was reported throughout the continent during her lifetime, earning her a series of honors in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child, her diary comparing Joni's development with that of her son, Rudy, had never been translated completely. This volume presents the first, complete English translation with 120 photographs, an introduction by Allen and Beatrix Gardner of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Nevada and an Afterword by Lisa A. Parr, Signe Preuschoft, and Frans B. M. de Waal of the Living Links Center.
A reader-friendly yet in-depth overview of the latest research on
mood as the way we are tuned to the world.
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 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.
This book, which gathers in one place the theories of 10 leading
cognitive and functional linguists, represents a new approach that
may define the next era in the history of psychology: It promises
to give psychologists a new appreciation of what this variety of
linguistics can offer their study of language and communication. In
addition, it provides cognitive-functional linguists new models for
presenting their work to audiences outside the boundaries of
traditional linguistics. Thus, it serves as an excellent text for
courses in psycholinguistics, and appeal to students and
researchers in cognitive science and functional linguistics.
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.
There are few more unsettling philosophical questions than this:
What happens in attempts to reduce some properties to some other
more fundamental properties? Reflection on this question inevitably
touches on very deep issues about ourselves, our own interactions
with the world and each other, and our very understanding of what
there is and what goes on around us. If we cannot command a clear
view of these deep issues, then very many other debates in
contemporary philosophy seem to lose traction - think of causation,
laws of nature, explanation, consciousness, personal identity,
intentionality, normativity, freedom, responsibility, justice, and
so on. Reduction can easily seem to unravel our world.
This volume contains selected and edited papers from the 7th European Conference on Eye Movements (ECEM 7) held in Durham, UK on August 31-September 3 1993. The volume is organized as follows: - Invited Lectures, Pursuit and Co-Ordination, Saccade and Fixation Control, Oculomotor Physiology, Clinical and Medical Aspects of Eye Movements, Eye Movements and Cognition, Eye Movements and Language and finally, Displays and Applications
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.
Discussed in this book is the association between speech and movements, especially those of the preferred hand. Both are skilled motor activities that appear to depend upon a similar neural organization that is available in the left hemisphere of the brain. The nature of this association of the cerebral control of speech and skilled manual performance is discussed in four sections: 1. Motor control and speech examines speech as a motor activity; 2. Language and gesture examines the correspondence between spoken language and manual gesture; 3. Motor performance and aphasia examines the motor impairments associated with aphasias; 4. Interactions of speech and manual performance examines the interactions that occur between concurrent verbal and manual activities.
Why Fly? is without argument, an important contribution to the body of theoretical literature on creativity. What makes this work unique, however, is that it's content and focus also enable it to stand on the shelf along side books on counseling/self help, curriculum development, school administration, business, and leadership. In short, Dr. Torrance has successfully produced a book with nearly universal appeal and application possibilities. - Roeper Review . . .For readers who are well-versed in Torrance's major ideas and themes, the book will serve as a convenient reference resource and probably as a source of some previously undiscovered pieces. For new explorers into the creativity literature, it will provide helpful grounding in the work of a major figure in the field and foundation for new questions and directions. Gifted Child Quarterly
Each chapter in this book is written by, and devoted to the original work of a leading researcher in his or her own field. The book presents an integrative approach to the psychological study of time in an attempt to bring to light similarities between bodies of research which have been developed independently within different theoretical frameworks - from Piaget's structuralist-organismic model, to information processing approaches. The chapters are organized in a life-span perspective, with different chapters focusing on different age-levels. It includes analyses of time perception in infancy, temporal systems in the developing language, time conception, time measurement and time reading in middle childhood and adolescence, as well as various models of time perception in the adult, both normal and abnormal. A rich concept such as time sheds light on a wide variety of major topics in psychology; the book will be of value to cognitive, developmental and educational psychologists, as well as to psycholinguists.
One of the most successful methods for discovering the way mental processes are organized is to observe the effects in experiments of selectively influencing the processes. Selective influence is crucial in techniques such as Sternberg's additive factor method for reaction times and Jacoby's process dissociation procedure for accuracy. The successful uses of selective influence have encouraged application extensions to complex architectures, to dependent variables such as evoked potentials, and to complex interpretations. But the common themes have become lost in the details of separate uses and specialized terminology. The book gives an introductory and unified account of the many uses of the technique in cognitive psychology. Related models from operations research and human factors are covered. The applications include dual tasks, visual and memory search, timing, categorization, and recall. The book takes a self-contained approach starting with clear explanations of the elementary notions and a building to advanced techniques. The book is written with graduate students in mind, but has content of interest to all researchers in cognitive science and cognitive engineering. |
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