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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology > General
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 book discusses the main milestones of early brain development and the emergence of consciousness, within and outside the mother's environment, with a particular focus on the preterm infant. These insights offer new perspectives on issues concerning fetal pain, awareness in newborns, and the effects of current digital media on the developing infant brain. Among the topics covered: * Brain patterning, neural proliferation, and migration. * The stress of being born and first breaths. * The stream of consciousness. * Parenting and stimulating the brain of the child. * The moral status of the fetus and the infant. Infant Brain Development is an excellent resource for researchers, clinicians and related professionals, and graduate students across a variety of disciplines including developmental psychology, pediatrics, neurobiology, neuroscience, obstetrics, nursing and medical ethics. It is written with historic and philosophical remarks of interest for a broad readership. --- "This book is a joy to read for anyone interested in understanding where biology is heading in the 21st century, and it is essential for those who work in child development." Eric Kandel, University Professor, Columbia University, Co-Director, Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Nobel Laureate in Medicine 2000 "With the precision of a scientist, the depth of a philosopher, and the heart and sensitivity of a pediatrician, Hugo Lagercrantz weaves a story as readable and engrossing as any mystery novel, linking brain, genes, the environment, and behavior to explain the development of the mind of a newborn. A tour de force!" Patricia K. Kuhl, The Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning, Co-Director, Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, University of Washington "This book is a noble and valiant effort by Dr. Lagercrantz to explain the immensely complex issue of normal and pathological development of the human brain in simple terms that are accessible to the general public." Pasko Rakic, Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine
This book provides a multifaceted analysis of how the human face drives many of our most important social behaviors. People perceive the identities, genders, and attractiveness of others from the many different faces they see every day. There has been great deal of research on the psychology, neuropsychology and neuroscience of how these perceptions are formed. However the facial displays of leadership, with their almost ubiquitous role in our social lives, remain largely unexplored. Carl Senior argues that perhaps now more than ever, it is crucial to understand how facial displays communicate leadership abilities. This book brings together perspectives from a range of international experts across a variety of fields including social psychology, organisational sciences and the study of primates, with the aim to further our understanding of this fundamental social force. Scholars and professionals, as well as anyone interested in learning more about how the face is used to drive our perception of leadership, will find this book of great interest.
Donald Kausler is one of the founding fathers of research on aging.
Internationally recognized, his efforts have formed the cornerstone
of research on how age affects memory and learning. Now, in one
comprehensive volume, Kausler condenses research findings in this
realm into one engaging and forthright book. What are the effects
of aging on classical and operant conditioning? How does age affect
memory capacity/transfer of learning skill acquisition? Kausler
addresses all of these issues and more in a clearly presented,
easily understood review of major research findings.
Contemporary Capacity-Building in Educational Contexts extends current understandings of what capacities and capacity-building are and of the dimensions that maximise their prospects of success in current educational policy-making and provision. It does this by exploring how capacity-building is implemented among nine groups of research participants, including Australian, Dutch and English circus families, migrants and refugees in an Australian regional town, and a university education research team. These data sets are analysed to address eight 'hot topics' and 'wicked problems' in contemporary education: consciousness; creativity; dis/empowerment and agency; diversity and identity; forms of capital and currencies; knowledge sharing; regionality and rurality; and resilience.
This book focuses on the evolutionary and developmental origins of the social mind. Written by leading scientists in the field, the book brings together the currently segregated views on social cognition in the two fields.
This book is a collection of writings by active researchers in the field of Artificial General Intelligence, on topics of central importance in the field. Each chapter focuses on one theoretical problem, proposes a novel solution, and is written in sufficiently non-technical language to be understandable by advanced undergraduates or scientists in allied fields. This book is the very first collection in the field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) focusing on theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical issues in the creation of thinking machines. All the authors are researchers actively developing AGI projects, thus distinguishing the book from much of the theoretical cognitive science and AI literature, which is generally quite divorced from practical AGI system building issues. And the discussions are presented in a way that makes the problems and proposed solutions understandable to a wide readership of non-specialists, providing a distinction from the journal and conference-proceedings literature. The book will benefit AGI researchers and students by giving them a solid orientation in the conceptual foundations of the field (which is not currently available anywhere); and it would benefit researchers in allied fields by giving them a high-level view of the current state of thinking in the AGI field. Furthermore, by addressing key topics in the field in a coherent way, the collection as a whole may play an important role in guiding future research in both theoretical and practical AGI, and in linking AGI research with work in allied disciplines
'A world-class tune-up for your brain.' Daniel H. Pink Why do we think we're better prepared for job interviews than we are? Why does no one act on climate change? Why do we over think when something bad happens to us? Renowned psychologist Professor Woo-kyoung Ahn devised a course at Yale called 'Thinking' to help students examine the biases that cause people so many problems in their daily lives. It quickly became one of the university's most popular courses. Now, for the first time, she presents key insights from her years of teaching and research. It's well known that our minds are tripped up by error, cognitive bias and prejudice. But knowing that isn't enough: the thinking problems still exist. In this clear guide, Professor Woo-kyoung Ahn gives clear and practical steps to actually change our thinking. The natural follow-up to Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, Thinking 101 shows how we can improve not just our own daily lives through better awareness of our biases, but the lives of everyone around us. It is required reading for everyone who wants to think - and live - better.
Rapid advances in cognitive neuroscience and converging technologies have led to a vigorous debate over cognitive enhancement. This book outlines the ethical and social issues, but goes on to focus on the policy dimensions, which until now have received much less attention. As the economic, social and personal stakes involved with cognitive enhancement are so high, and the advances in knowledge so swift, we are likely to see increasing demands for government involvement in cognitive enhancement techniques. The book therefore places these techniques in a political context and brings the subsequent considerations and divisions to the forefront of the debate, situating their resolution within the milieu of interest group politics. The book will provide a starting point from which readers can develop a balanced policy framework for addressing such concerns.
This edited book adopts a cognitive perspective to provide breadth and depth to state-of-the-art research related to understanding, analyzing, predicting and improving one of the most prominent and important classes of behavior of modern humans, information search. It is timely as the broader research area of cognitive computing and cognitive technology have recently attracted much attention, and there has been a surge in interest to develop systems and technology that are more compatible with human cognitive abilities. Divided into three interlocking sections, the first introduces the foundational concepts of information search from a cognitive computing perspective to highlight the research questions and approaches that are shared among the contributing authors. Relevant concepts from psychology, information and computing sciences are addressed. The second section discusses methods and tools that are used to understand and predict information search behavior and how the cognitive perspective can provide unique insights into the complexities of the behavior in various contexts. The final part highlights a number of areas of applications of which education and training, collaboration and conversational search interfaces are important ones. Understanding and Improving Information Search - A Cognitive Approach includes contributions from cognitive psychologists, information and computing scientists around the globe, including researchers from Europe (France, Netherlands, Germany), the US, and Asia (India, Japan), providing their unique but coherent perspectives to the core issues and questions most relevant to our current understanding of information search behavior and improving information search.
Arguably the most influential thinker on education in the twentieth century, Dewey's contribution lies along several fronts. His attention to experience and reflection, democracy and community, and to environments for learning have been seminal...
A collection of state-of-the-art presentations on visualization problems in mathematics, fundamental mathematical research in computer graphics, and software frameworks for the application of visualization to real-world problems. Contributions have been written by leading experts and peer-refereed by an international editorial team. The book grew out of the third international workshop ‘Visualization and Mathematics’, May 22-25, 2002 in Berlin. The variety of topics covered makes the book ideal for researcher, lecturers, and practitioners.
This proceedings volume presents the latest scientific research and trends in experimental economics, with particular focus on neuroeconomics. Derived from the 2016 Computational Methods in Experimental Economics (CMEE) conference held in Szczecin, Poland, this book features research and analysis of novel computational methods in neuroeconomics. Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that combines neuroscience, psychology and economics to build a comprehensive theory of decision making. At its core, neuroeconomics analyzes the decision-making process not only in terms of external conditions or psychological aspects, but also from the neuronal point of view by examining the cerebral conditions of decision making. The application of IT enhances the possibilities of conducting such analyses. Such studies are now performed by software that provides interaction among all the participants and possibilities to register their reactions more accurately. This book examines some of these applications and methods. Featuring contributions on both theory and application, this book is of interest to researchers, students, academics and professionals interested in experimental economics, neuroeconomics and behavioral economics.
Stress is an increasingly popular subject and is studied across a range of areas within psychology. Examples relate to everyday issues like school, family and stress within the workplace. New edition examines stress related to current hot topics, like stress and technology.
The book contains contributions by leading figures in philosophy of mind and action, emotion theory, and phenomenology. As the focus of the volume is truly innovative we expect the book to sell well to both philosophers and scholars from neighboring fields such as social and cognitive science. The predominant view in analytic philosophy is that an ability for self-evaluation is constitutive for agency and intentionality. Until now, the debate is limited in two (possibly mutually related) ways: Firstly, self-evaluation is usually discussed in individual terms, and, as such, not sufficiently related to its social dimensions; secondly, self-evaluation is viewed as a matter of belief and desire, neglecting its affective and emotional aspects. The aim of the book is to fill these research lacunas and to investigate the question of how these two shortcomings of the received views are related.
Human beings have been using intoxicating substances for millennia. But while most people have used psychoactive substances without becoming dependent on them, a significant minority develop substance use disorders. The question remains: why does addiction occur in some and not others? The 61st installment of the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Genes and the Motivation to Use Substances probes the complex role of genetics in substance use and abuse across diverse methodologies, research organisms, levels of analysis and disciplines. Its combined lifespan/motivation approach to individual differences sheds necessary light on genetic vs. environmental factors in vulnerability, addiction risk, the relationship between behavioral disinhibition and substance use and the motivation to quit. While alcohol use/abuse is the focus of much of the book, its chapters provide scientific and clinical insights into substance abuse in general as well as implications for treatment. And an intriguing conclusion discusses the need to bridge the gap between genetics and neuroscience and the best scientific conditions in which this integration may thrive. Included in the coverage: * Rodent models of genetic contributions to the motivation to use alcohol. * The adolescent origins of substance abuse disorders * The developmental matrix of addictive behavior * The genetics of cannabis involvement * The DNA methylation signature of smoking * Genomics of impulsivity: integrating genetics and neuroscience. Reflecting the current state of knowledge in a field with groundbreaking potential, Genes and the Motivation to Use Substances is a fascinating resource for psychologists, psychiatrists, geneticists, neuroscientists, social workers, policymakers and researchers in addiction.
The Psychology of Learning and Motivation publishes empirical and theoretical contributions in cognitive and experimental psychology, ranging from classical and instrumental conditioning to complex learning and problem solving. Each chapter provides a thoughtful integration of a body of work.
Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account is the
first book-length treatment of philosophical issues and
implications in current cellular and molecular neuroscience. John
Bickle articulates a philosophical justification for investigating
"lower level" neuroscientific research and describes a set of
experimental details that have recently yielded the reduction of
memory consolidation to the molecular mechanisms of long-term
potentiation (LTP). These empirical details suggest answers to
recent philosophical disputes over the nature and possibility of
psycho-neural scientific reduction, including the multiple
realization challenge, mental causation, and relations across
explanatory levels. Bickle concludes by examining recent work in
cellular neuroscience pertaining to features of conscious
experience, including the cellular basis of working memory, the
effects of explicit selective attention on single-cell activity in
visual cortex, and sensory experiences induced by cortical
microstimulation. This final chapter poses a challenge both to
"mysterians," who insist that empirical science cannot address
particular features of consciousness, and to cognitivists, who
insist that addressing consciousness scientifically will require
experimental and theoretical resources that go beyond those used in
neuroscience's cellular and molecular core.
This diverse set of essays traces Epstein's experimental and theoretical work over a 15 year period. Four of the essays were coauthored by the eminent psychologist B.F. Skinner. The book demonstrates how the scientific study of behavior can increase our understanding and effectiveness in many domains: creativity and innovation, parenting, artificial intelligence, self-improvement, and even world peace. Reviewers have praised the volume as an impressive effort by one of America's most notable psychologists. Epstein's goals in writing this book were (a) to present some relatively interesting papers that can stand alone and (b) to organize and edit them so that sections have some integrity and so that the overall volume paints a fairly consistent picture of his evolving views on cognition, creativity, and behavior. Parts I and II focus on generativity research and theory and on some Columban (pigeon) simulations of human behavior, and Part III includes some related laboratory studies. Part IV is concerned with efforts to create a comprehensive science of behavior, and Part V includes essays about Skinner, one of the principle architects of behaviorism. Part VI includes forays into artifical intelligence, child rearing, categorization research, and other topics, and Part VII takes the volume to some uncertain reflections on growing older, and to a modest proposal for a day of world peace.
Young's thesis concludes that the higher activities of humans can be illuminated through an examination of the actual brain functions that produce them, and that these processes can be closely compared to those of a calculating machine. |
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