Aware provides practical instruction for mastering the Wheel of Awareness, a life-changing tool for cultivating more focus, presence, and peace in one's day-to-day life.

An in-depth look at the science that underlies meditation's effectiveness, this book teaches readers how to harness the power of the principle "Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows." Siegel reveals how developing a Wheel of Awareness practice to focus attention, open awareness, and cultivate kind intention can literally help you grow a healthier brain and reduce fear, anxiety, and stress in your life.

Whether you have no experience with a reflective practice or are an experienced practitioner, Aware is a hands-on guide that will enable you to become more focused and present, as well as more energized and emotionally resilient in the face of stress and the everyday challenges life throws your way.

"Engaging Audiences" provides an insightful introduction to spectatorship from the perspective of cognitive studies. Using performances of several plays and a wide array of scientific evidence, McConachie examines the dynamics of conscious attention, mental concepts, empathy, emotion, and culture in theatregoing. This ground-breaking study challenges many of the current theories used to understand spectators and is a valuable resource to artists and scholars interested in how and why audiences enjoy performance.

How does motivation work? The classic answer is that people are motivated to approach pleasure and avoid pain, that they are motivated by "carrots and sticks." But to understand human motivation, it is necessary to go beyond pleasure and pain. What people want is to be effective in their life pursuits, and there are three distinct ways that people want to be effective. They want to be effective in having desired results (value), which includes having pleasure but is not limited to pleasure. They want to be effective in managing what happens (control) and in establishing what's real (truth), even if the process of managing what happens or establishing what's real is painful. These three distinct ways of wanting to be effective go beyond just wanting pleasure, but there is even more to the story of how motivation works. These ways of wanting to be effective do not function in isolation. Rather, they work together. Indeed, the ways that value, truth, and control work together is the central story of motivation. By understanding how motivation works as an organization of value, truth, and control motives, we can re-think basic motivational issues, such as the nature of personality and culture, how the motives of others can be managed effectively, and what is "the good life."

Political Communication and Cognition draws on a range of theories from communication psychology to explain how citizens receive communication about politics, how communication might make a citizen think and importantly what stimulates political participation, whether simply paying attention, chatting online or going to vote.

An integrative introduction to the theories and themes in research on creativity, this book is both a reference work and text for courses in this burgeoning area of research. The book begins with a discussion of the theories of creativity (Person, Product, Process, Place), the general question of whether creativity is influenced by nature or nurture, what research has indicated of the personality and style of creative individuals from a personality analysis standpoint, how social context affects creativity, and then coverage of issues like gender differences, whether creativity can be enhanced, if creativity is related to poor mental or physical health, etc.
The book contains boxes covering special interest items including one page biographies of famous creative individuals and activities for a group or individual to test and/or encourage creativity, as well as references to internet sites relating to creativity.
*Breaks down the major theories about creativity but doesn't restrict to a singular perspective
*Includes extensive citations of existing literature
*Textbook features included (i.e., key terms defined)

This volume provides a sample of the research on individual differences in different content areas of study. The first section presents authors whose concern is with development at some stage. The second section presents chapters on exceptionality (a chapter on learning disability and another on gif

What underlies the worlds most acclaimed acts of creative genius? Can we predict who has the capacity to become a noble creator? These are just a sample of questions addressed by the studies in this book, tackled by the author in unique fashion. He first compiles large databases on samples of eminent creators and their products. The databases, which may include both biographical and historical information, as well as characteristics on the creations, are then subjected to advanced statistical analyses. In this way, the investigator can tease out the factors that led to the achievements of an Archimedes, Descartes, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Beethoven. We can also discover the reasons for the phenomenal success of certain masterpieces. By using these historiometric methods, psychologists can enhance our scientific comprehension of the most important phenomena of human behavior - creativity and genius.

This book presents a collection of articles reflecting state-of-the-art research in visual perception, specifically concentrating on neural correlates of perception. Each section addresses one of the main topics in vision research today. Part 2: Fundamentals of Awareness, Multi-Sensory Integration and High-Order Perception covers topics from filling-in to visual awareness to crossmodal interactions. A variety of methodological approaches are represented, including single-neuron recordings, fMRI and optical imaging, psychophysics, eye movement characterization and computational modelling. The contributions will provide the reader with a valuable perspective on the current status of vision research, and more importantly, with critical insight into future research directions and the discoveries yet to come.
- Provides a detailed breakdown of the neural and psychophysical bases of Perception
- Presents never-before-published original discoveries
- Includes multiple full-color illustrations

Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book explores the emerging topics and rapid technological developments of robotics and artificial intelligence through the lens of the evolving role of sex robots, and how they should best be designed to serve human needs. An international panel of authors provides the most up-to-date, evidence-based empirical research on the potential sexual applications of artificial intelligence. Early chapters discuss the objections to sexual activity with robots while also providing a counterargument to each objection. Subsequent chapters present the implications of robot sex as well as the security and data privacy issues associated with sexual interactions with artificial intelligence. The book concludes with a chapter highlighting the importance of a scientific, multidisciplinary approach to the study of human - robot sexuality. Topics featured in this book include: The Sexual Interaction Illusion Model. The personal companion system, Harmony, designed by Realbotix (TM). An exposition of the challenges of personal data control and protection when dealing with artificial intelligence. The current and future technological possibilities of projecting three-dimensional holograms. Expert discussion notes from an international workshop on the topic. AI Love You will be of interest to academic researchers in psychology, robotics, ethics, medical science, sociology, gender studies as well as clinicians, policy makers, and the business sector.

What were the circumstances that led to the development of our cognitive abilities from a primitive hominid to an essentially modern human? The answer to this question is of profound importance to understanding our present nature. Since the steep path of our cognitive development is the attribute that most distinguishes humans from other mammals, this is also a quest to determine human origins. This collection of outstanding scientific problems and the revelation of the many ways they can be addressed indicates the scope of the field to be explored and reveals some avenues along which research is advancing. Distinguished scientists and researchers who have advanced the discussion of the mind and brain contribute state-of-the-art presentations of their field of expertise. Chapters offer speculative and provocative views on topics such as body, culture, evolution, feelings, genetics, history, humor, knowledge, language, machines, neuroanatomy, pathology, and perception. This book will appeal to researchers and students in cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy.
* Includes a contribution by Noam Chomsky, one of the most cited authors of our time

In this book, a generic model in as far as possible mathematical closed-formis developed that predicts the behavior of large self-organizing robot groups (robot swarms) based on their control algorithm. In addition, an extensive subsumption of the relatively young and distinctive interdisciplinary research field of swarm robotics is emphasized. The connection to many related fields is highlighted and the concepts and methods borrowed from these fields are described shortly.

This pioneering book lays new foundations for the study of reference and truth. It seeks to explain the origins and characteristics of human ways of relating to the world by means of an understanding of the inherent structures of the mind. Wolfram Hinzen explores truth in the light of Noam Chomsky's Minimalist Program. Truth, he argues, is a function of the human mind and, in particular, likely presupposes the structure of the human clause. Professor Hinzen begins by setting out the essentials of the Minimalist Program and by considering the explanatory role played by the interfaces of the linguistic system with other cognitive systems. He then sets out an internalist reconstruction of meaning. He argues that meaning stems from concepts, originating not from reference but from intentional relations built up in human acts of language in which such concepts figure. How we refer, he suggests, is a function of the concepts we possess, rather than the reverse in which reference to the world gives us the concepts to realize it. He concludes with extended accounts of declarative sentences and names, the two aspects of language which seem most inimical to his approach. The book makes important and radical contributions to theory and debate in linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science. The author frames his argument in a way that will be readily comprehensible to scholars and advanced students in all three disciplines.

Provides new empirical study data that explores the influence of linguistic variables within developmental contexts on theory of mind development and functioning

Establishes context for usage, including personal, social, and business interactions

Offers a comprehensive overview on the most current studies that address the relationship between language and theory of mind

Psychophysics and Experimental Phenomenology of Pattern Cognition examines the cognitive transformations that underly this cognitive system and the specialized subsystems for processing these transformations. Sections cover symmetry cognition, contour perception and geometric illusion. Weight sensation is also discussed, as are repetitive and dot patterns. By incorporating elements of both psychophysics and experimental phenomenology, pattern cognition is examined from both the physical and mental sensory perspective, thus providing a comprehensive view of this cognitive system.

The interest in 'biomarkers' seen across a spectrum of biomedical disciplines reflects the rise of molecular biology and genetics. A host of 'omics' disciplines in addition to genomics, marked by multidimensional data and complex analyses, and enabled by bioinformatics, have pushed the trajectory of biomarker development even further. They have also made more tractable the complex mappings of genotypes to phenotypes - genome-to-phenome mapping - to which the concept of a biomarker is central. Genomic investigations of the brain are beginning to reveal spectacular associations between genes and neural systems. Neural and cognitive phenomics are considered a necessary complement to genomics of the brain. Other major omics developments such as connectomics, the comprehensive mapping of neurons and neural networks, are heralding brain maps of unprecedented detail. Such developments are defining a new era of brain science. And in this new research environment, neural systems and cognitive operations are pressed for new kinds of definitions - that facilitate brain-behavioral alignment in an omics operating environment. This volume explores the topic of markers framed around the constructs of cognitive and neural systems. 'Neurophenotype' is a term adopted to describe a neural or cognitive marker that can be scientifically described within an associative framework - and while the genome-to-phenome framework is the most recognized of these, epigenetics and non-gene-regulated neural dynamics also suggest other frameworks. In either case, the term neurophenotype defines operational constructs of brain-behavioral domains that serve the integration of these domains with neuroscientific and omics models of the brain. The topic is critically important to psychiatry and neuropsychology: Neurophenotypes offer a 'format' and a 'language' by which psychiatry and neuropsychology can be in step with the brain sciences. They also bring a new challenge to the clinical neurosciences in terms of construct validation and refinement. Topics covered in the volume include: Brain and cognition in the omics era Phenomics, connectomics, and Research Domain Criteria Circuit-based neurophenotypes, and complications posed by non-gene regulated factors The legacy of the endophenotype concept - its utility and limitations Various potential neurophenotypes of relevance to clinical neuroscience, including Response Inhibition, Fear Conditioning and Extinction, Error Processing, Reward Dependence and Reward Deficiency, Face Perception, and Language Phenotypes Dynamic (electrophysiological) and computational neurophenotypes The challenge of a cultural shift for psychiatry and neuropsychology The volume may be especially relevant to researchers and clinical practitioners in psychiatry and neuropsychology and to cognitive neuroscientists interested in the intersection of neuroscience with genomics, phenomics and other omics disciplines.

In The Unity of Consciousness Tim Bayne draws on philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience in defence of the claim that consciousness is unified. In the first part of the book Bayne develops an account of what it means to say that consciousness is unified. Part II applies this account to a variety of cases - drawn from both normal and pathological forms of experience - in which the unity of consciousness is said to break down. Bayne argues that the unity of consciousness remains intact in each of these cases. Part III explores the implications of the unity of consciousness for theories of consciousness, for the sense of embodiment, and for accounts of the self. In one of the most comprehensive examinations of the topic available, The Unity of Consciousness draws on a wide range of findings within philosophy and the sciences of the mind to construct an account of the unity of consciousness that is both conceptually sophisticated and scientifically informed.

The goal of inquiry is to acquire knowledge of truths about the world. In this book, Jason Stanley argues that knowing how to do something amounts to knowing a truth about the world. When you learned how to swim, what happened is that you learned some truths about swimming. Knowledge of these truths is what gave you knowledge of how to swim. Something similar occurred with every other activity that you now know how to do, such as riding a bicycle or cooking a meal. Of course, when you learned how to swim, you didn't learn just any truth about swimming. You learned a special kind of truth about swimming, one that answers the question, "How could you swim?" Know How develops an account of the kinds of answers to questions, knowledge of which explains skilled action. Drawing on work in epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, action theory, philosophy of language, linguistic semantics, and cognitive neuroscience, Stanley presents a powerful case that it is our success as inquirers that explains our capacity for skillful engagement with the world.

This book explores the relationship between cultural psychology and aesthetics, by integrating the historical, theoretical and phenomenological perspectives. It offers a comprehensive discussion of the history of aesthetics and psychology from an international perspective, with contributions by leading researchers from Serbia, Austria, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and Brazil. The first section of the book aims at summarizing the debate of where the song comes from. It discusses undeveloped topics, methodological hints, and epistemological questions in the different areas of contemporary psychological sciences. The second section of the book presents concrete examples of case-studies and methodological issues (the new melodies in psychological research) to stimulate further explorations. The book aims to bring art back into psychology, to provide an understanding for the art of psychology. An Old Melody in a New Song will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in the fields of educational and developmental psychology, cultural psychology, history of ideas, aesthetics, and art-based research.

"Cognitive psychology," "cognitive neuroscience," and "philosophy of mind" are names for three very different scientific fields, but they label aspects of the same scientific goal: to understand the nature of mental phenomena. Today, the three disciplines strongly overlap under the roof of the cognitive sciences. The book's purpose is to present views from the different disciplines on one of the central theories in cognitive science: the theory of mental models. Cognitive psychologists report their research on the representation and processing of mental models in human memory. Cognitive neuroscientists demonstrate how the brain processes visual and spatial mental models and which neural processes underlie visual and spatial thinking. Philosophers report their ideas about the role of mental models in relation to perception, emotion, representation, and intentionality. The single articles have different and mutually complementing goals: to introduce new empirical methods and approaches, to report new experimental results, and to locate competing approaches for their interpretation in the cross-disciplinary debate. The book is strongly interdisciplinary in character. It is especially addressed to researchers in any field related to mental models theory as both a reference book and an overview of present research on the topic in other disciplines. However, it is also an ideal reader for a specialized graduate course.
*Examines the theory of mental models from the perspectives of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of the mind
*Introduces new empirical methods, experimental results, and interdisciplinary yet complementary approaches
*Serves as a reference book and an overview of current research

Wertsch argues against reductionist accounts of human cognition and proposes a sociocultural perspective, which moves beyond the isolated individual. He suggests that "mediated action" and cultural tools shape cognitive processes and can explain how they are organized.

The thesis advanced in this book is that feeling and cognition actualize through a process that originates in older brain formations and develops outward through limbic and cortical fields through the self-concept and private space into (as) the world. An iteration of this transition deposits acts, objects, feelings and utterances. Value is a mode of conceptual feeling that depends on the dominant phase in this transition: from desire through interest to object worth. Among the topics covered are subjective time and change, the epochal nature of objects and their temporal extensibility and the evolution of value from inorganic matter into organic form. The theory of microgenesis informs this work. According to this theory, acts and objects evolve in milliseconds through phases that replicate patterns in forebrain evolution. The progression in the actualization of the mind/brain state is from archaic to recent in brain formation, from unity to diversity, from past to present and from mind to world. An account is given of the diversity of felt experience avoiding the reductionist moves characteristic of biological materialism and the inherent dualism of psychoanalytic and related theories. This book is intended for any reader interested in the psychology of the inner life and philosophy of mind, including philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and others with an interest in problems of value and moral feeling.

Fantasies of Flight invigorates the field of personality psychology by challenging the contemporary academic view that individuals are best studied as carriers of traits. Daniel Ogilvie exchanges a heart-to-heart, case study approach to understanding human behavior for the current strategies of categorizing and comparing individuals according to their manifest traits. Ogilvie asks and endeavors to answer questions like "What were the psychological conditions that led Sir James Barrie to create a character named Peter Pan?" and "What were the dynamics behind the Marshall Herff Applewhite's conviction that a space ship, hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet, would rescue him and his Heaven's Gate followers after they enacted a mass suicide pact in 1997?" Answering these questions requires him to resurrect "old" ways to think about personality and "old" strategies for studying individuals one by one. Early in the book, Ogilvie reviews the history of why intensive case studies were discredited in psychology and describes how Sigmund Freud's psychobiographical account of Leonardo da Vinci's fascination with flight inadvertently abetted critics of psychoanalytic psychology. He then performs a partial psychobiography of James Barrie and the origins of Peter Pan, followed by an investigation of Carl Jung, who fashioned the collective unconscious to serve as humankind's link to eternity. Arguing that personality psychology needs to become less insular, Ogilvie integrates information from the disciplines of developmental psychology and neuroscience into a theory regarding the latent needs that both Barrie and Jung sought to satisfy. The theory, including its emphasis on the onset of self and consciousness, is then applied to an array of well-known and obscure individuals with ascensionistic inclinations. Well written and accessible, but complex and scholarly, this volume will restore interest in the investigation of people's inner lives.

This scholarly book presents and critically evaluates the outstanding contributions of both cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence to our understanding of the nature of intelligence and intelligent systems. Examining conceptual thought across the domains of reasoning and logic, language and analogy, and scientific discovery, Wagman compares human reasoning with computer reasoning. Of special interest to readers is the general critique of artificial intelligence research directed toward the ultimate objective of mapping and surpassing all of human knowledge.

The first chapter examines the theoretical foundations of the logical approach to artificial intelligence and the centrality of declarative knowledge and the predicate calculus. The artifical intelligence system, CYC, is critically examined with respect to its avowed objective of matching or surpassing human intelligence. The second chapter focuses on the probabilistic contrast model of causal reasoning and underscores its significance as a mathematical conceptualization of human reasoning. In the third chapter, the ARCS (Analogical Retrieval by Constraint Satisfaction) system is discussed and its psychological validity is evaluated. In the fourth chapter, scientific heuristics characteristics of different developmental levels and differentially applied in the discovery spaces of hypotheses and experiments are analyzed in the context of the philosophy of science. The fifth chapter presents the logic, principles, and applications of PAULINE, a pragmatic language generation system and explains human language pragmatics.

This monograph originates from my work on the HAPTEX project. In - cember 2004 Prof. Franz-Erich Wolter, the head of the Institute of Man- Machine Communication of the Leibniz Universit. at Hannover, o?ered me the opportunity to participate in that EU funded project. Being a mat- matician I had only very little experience in the ?eld of haptic simulation in those days, but Prof. Wolter trusted in my ability to become acquainted with new ?elds of research in a very short time. I am still thankful for the con?dence he has shown me. Since then I indeed learned and found out a lot. With this monograph I try to pass on the knowledge I gained. Having a reader in mind who-like me at the beginning of the project-has no background in psychophysics, neurophysiologyortextileengineeringIwillprovidethenecessarybasics.The skilled reader may safely skip these parts. Nevertheless I presume some basic knowledge in mathematics. I hope that this thesis might help a newcomer to discover the fascinating ?eld of tactile simulation. This workwouldnot havebeen possible without the funding of the project "HAPtic sensing of virtual TEXtiles" (HAPTEX) under the Sixth Fra- work Programme (FP6) of the European Union (Contract No. IST-6549).