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.

The Skills of Document Use: From Text Comprehension to Web-Based Learning examines functional literacy from a psychological standpoint. It offers a comprehensive discussion of the cognitive skills involved in reading, comprehending, and making use of complex documents. Understanding such skills is important at times when printed and online information systems are being used more and more extensively for work, education, and personal development. It is also very important to understand how the Internet transforms the way we search, read, and comprehend documents. The core purpose of the book is to inform research scientists, students, and instructional designers about recent advances in the psychology of document comprehension. Whereas reading research has mostly focused on basic cognitive processes involved in simple comprehension tasks, this book extends the psychology of reading to more complex, real-life comprehension activities. The book draws a link between research areas usually separated: language psychology, on the one hand, and Web design, on the other hand. The work also attempts to bridge a gap between research in cognitive psychology and practical issues in the design and use of information systems. It invites the reader to a guided journey from theoretical models of text comprehension to concrete issues in the design and use of instructional technology. The book will be of interest to students specializing in psychology, language, communication, and publishing. It will also be useful to all those who are involved in the training of literacy skills, or in the design of information systems accessible to a wide audience.

This book concerns measuring reading skills. It is not meant to be a compre hensive survey of reading research or a review of all possible approaches to reading measurement (although considerable attention is given to both subjects). Instead, the purpose of this book is to present a coherent, theoretically based approach to measuring reading competence. The ability to measure a phenomenon is an important prerequisite for scientific analysis. As Lord Kelvin said, "One's knowledge of science begins when he can measure what he is speaking about and express it in numbers." Unfortunately, not just any numbers will do. Presently available reading tests provide their users with a plethora of numbers-age levels, percentiles, grade equivalents-but their scientific value is questionable. The problem is that there is more to scientific measurement than merely assigning numbers to arbitrarily chosen behaviors. Scientific measurement occurs only within the confines of a theory, and most reading tests are atheoretical. Recent years have witnessed an explosive growth in reading research."

This volume presents an important glimpse into the directions in which the research and measurement of intelligence are likely to go in future decades. Part one examines perspectives on the theory of intelligence, identifying the research likely to be productive in future investigations. Part Two considers perspectives on the measurement of intelligence, emphasizing the links between current theory and future testing.

How did human thought evolve into the highly complex process it is today? In the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology, cognitive science and archaeology intersect to provide a more complete and grounded picture of the mind. With the combination of cognitive theories and archaeological evidence, this burgeoning field is only beginning to tap into the potential for a better understanding of the development of specific cognitive abilities. Cognitive Models in Palaeolithic Archaeology explores hominin cognitive development by applying formal cognitive models to analyze prehistoric remains from the entire range of the Palaeolithic, from the earliest stone tools 3.3 million years ago to artistic developments that emerged 50,000 years ago. Several different cognitive models are presented, including expert cognition, information processing, material engagement theory, embodied/extended cognition, neuroaesthetics, visual resonance theory, theory of mind, and neuronal recycling. By examining archaeological remains, and thereby past activities and behavior, through the grounded lenses of these models, a mosaic pattern of human cognitive evolution emerges. This volume, authored by many leading authorities in the field of cognitive archaeology, will attract scholars and students of cognitive evolution and paleoanthropology, who will find a new understanding of hominin cognitive evolution and substantive conclusions about our hominin evolution as opportunities for further research.

In the study of the computational structure of biological/robotic sensorimotor systems, distributed models have gained center stage in recent years, with a range of issues including self-organization, non-linear dynamics, field computing etc. This multidisciplinary research area is addressed here by a multidisciplinary team of contributors, who provide a balanced set of articulated presentations which include reviews, computational models, simulation studies, psychophysical, and neurophysiological experiments.

The book is divided into three parts, each characterized by a slightly different focus: in part I, the major theme concerns computational maps which typically model cortical areas, according to a view of the sensorimotor cortex as "geometric engine" and the site of "internal models" of external spaces. Part II also addresses problems of self-organization and field computing, but in a simpler computational architecture which, although lacking a specialized cortical machinery, can still behave in a very adaptive and surprising way by exploiting the interaction with the real world. Finally part III is focused on the motor control issues related to the physical properties of muscular actuators and the dynamic interactions with the world.

The reader will find different approaches on controversial issues, such as the role and nature of force fields, the need for internal representations, the nature of invariant commands, the vexing question about coordinate transformations, the distinction between hierachiacal and bi-directional modelling, and the influence of muscle stiffness.

This revised textbook, now co-authored by an eminent child neuropsychologist, combines a well-developed theoretical orientation with practical, remedial suggestions and includes helpful, pertinent case studies to effectively illustrate the neuropsychological principles. A new chapter on "Attention Deficit Disorder" has been added. As with the two previous editions, this one follows the tradition of providing a highly integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to learning disabilities in adults and children. From the reviews of the first edition: "William Gaddes has attempted and...accomplished a very difficult task - that of communicating the complex assortment of neuropsychological research and evidence on learning disorders so that professionals in various disciplines can make use of such information in their daily practice..." #Journal of Learning Disabilities#1

Author Lee suggests that people are the way they are due to the interaction of their intellectual characteristics (IQ), their emotional characteristics (EQ), and a number of random events that can be summarized as the fickle fingers of fate (F3).

The book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of current research on cognitive and applied aspects of eye movements. The contents include peer-reviewed chapters based on a selection of papers presented at the 11th European Conference on Eye Movements (Turku, Finland 2001), supplemented by invited contributions. The ECEM conference series brings together researchers from various disciplines with an interest to use eye-tracking to study perceptual and higher order cognitive functions.
The contents of the book faithfully reflect the scope and diversity of interest in eye-tracking as a fruitful tool both in basic and applied research. It consists of five sections: visual information processing and saccadic eye movements; empirical studies of reading and language production; computational models of eye movements in reading; eye-tracking as a tool to study human-computer interaction; and eye movement applications in media and communication research.
Each section is concluded by a commentary chapter by one of the leading authorities in the field. These commentaries discuss and integrate the contributions in the section and provide an expert view on the most significant present and future developments in the respective areas.
The book is a reference volume including a large body of new empirical work but also principal theoretical viewpoints of leading research groups in the field.

Cultural neuroscience combines brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and event-related brain potentials with methods of social and cultural psychology to investigate whether and how cultures influence the neural mechanisms of perception, attention, emotion, social cognition, and other human cognitive processes. The findings of cultural neuroscience studies improve our understanding of the relation between human brain function and sociocultural contexts and help to reframe the "big question" of nature versus nurture. This book is organized so that two chapters provide general views of the relation between biological evolution, cultural evolution and recent cultural neuroscience studies, while other chapters focus on several aspects of human cognition that have been shown to be strongly influenced by sociocultural factors such as self-concept representation, language processes, emotion, time perception, and decision-making. The main goal of this work is to address how thinking actually takes place and how the underlying neural mechanisms are affected by culture and identity.

Cognitive psychology is an enormous field with a rich history. One problem confronting instructors in cognitive psychology courses is covering such diverse topics as pattern recognition, attention, memory, language, decision-making, and problem solving. It is virtually impossible to both cover these topics and provide details regarding the beauty of the experimental studies that have tackled important topics in a single textbook. Cognitive Psychology: Key Readings helps fill this void and provides students with the opportunity to learn about the details of the actual articles and chapters that have had major influences in the development of this discipline. The classic papers were selected because they have been central in defining distinct areas of research or changing the way researchers think about a given topic. The reader can learn about the available literature that motivated a study, the theoretical rationale, and the details of the methods and results that were used to develop a better understanding of the topic. In this way, the reader can learn about the actual science of uncovering the theoretical issues, instead of simple overviews of the results. In addition, because cognitive psychology is constantly evolving, introductory sections to each topic are provided to help the reader better understand why a particular study is so important to the field. Along with an overview chapter that provides introductions to theoretical and methodological approaches that cognitive researchers have employed, Cognitive Psychology: Key Readings will begin to appreciate how scientists are unravelling how the mind works.

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The potential for cognitive neuroscience to shed light on social behaviour is increasingly being acknowledged and is set to become an important new approach in the field of psychology. Standing at the vanguard of this development, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Social Behaviour provides a state-of-the-art contribution to a subject still in its infancy. Divided into three parts, the book presents an overview of research into neural substrates of social interactions, the cognitive neuroscience of social cognition and human disorders of social behaviour and cognition.

This definitive volume is the result of collaboration by top scholars in the field of children's cognition. * New edition offers an up-to-date overview of all the major areas of importance in the field, and includes new data from cognitive neuroscience and new chapters on social cognitive development and language * Provides state-of-the-art summaries of current research by international specialists in different areas of cognitive development * Spans aspects of cognitive development from infancy to the onset of adolescence * Includes chapters on symbolic reasoning, pretend play, spatial development, abnormal cognitive development and current theoretical perspectives

This volume is a collection of selected papers that were presented at the international conference Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. Abduction, Logic, and Computational Discovery (MBR09 BRAZIL), held at the University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil in December 2009. A previous volume, Model-Based Reasoning in Scienti?c Discovery, edited by L. Magnani, N.J. Nersessian, and P. Thagard (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 1999; Chinese edition, China Science and Techn- ogy Press, Beijing, 2000), was based on the papers presented at the ?rst "model-based reasoning"international conference, held at the University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy in December 1998. Other two volumes were based on the papers presented at the second "model-based reasoning" international c- ference, held at the same place in May 2001: Model-Based Reasoning. Sci- ti?c Discovery, Technological Innovation, Values, edited by L. Magnani and N.J. Nersessian(Kluwer Academic/PlenumPublishers, New York, 2002)and Logical and Computational Aspects of Model-Based Reasoning, editedbyL. Magnani, N.J. Nersessian, and C. Pizzi(KluwerAcademic, Dordrecht,2002). Another volume Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Engineering, edited byL.Magnani(CollegePublications, London,2006), wasbasedonthepapers presentedat the third"model-basedreasoning"internationalconference, held at the same place in December 2004. Finally, volume Model-Based Reasoning inScienceandMedicine, editedbyL.MagnaniandL.Ping(Springer, Heid- berg/Berlin 2006), was based on the papers presented at the fourth"mod- based"reasoning conference, held at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, P. R. China.

There have been many Christian interpretations of art from a variety of theological perspectives. The direction of these critiques has invariably been from theology to art. Theological (even dogmatic) presuppositions have determined the way in which art in general or movements in art of particular works of art have been interpreted. There is now need for an understanding of art which affirms the crucial importance of art for theology. The direction of the critique must be from art to theology, rather than the other direction. Christian theologians must at the very least appreciate and affirm the value of art for the religion of the Incarnation. This book sets out some steps towards such an appreciation through the exploration of three interconnecting themes. In his exploration of the first theme. Embodiment and Incarnation, the author argues that Richard Wollheim's statement that 'Art rests on the fact that deep feelings pattern themselves in a coberent way all over our life and behaviour' (Art and its Object, 1980) applies equally to religion. With the second theme. Similarities and Differences, the author notes the way each can act as a critique of the other. Christianity has, particularly though not exclusively in its reformed and evangelical traditions, tended to overvalue the word of Scripture and of dogma, with the result that the non-verbal arts have been at best ignored and often feared. Generally, on their side, the arts (particularly in the modern period) have asserted their autonomy and have generally rejected notions of responsibility to social, ethical or religious principles or ideals. Finally, in treating the theme Faith and Imagination, the author argues that art canserve as an agent of salvation by helping theology to create frames of reference for the interpretation fuller experience of personal life. Canon

This book looks at causative reasons behind creative acts and stylistic expressions. It explores how creativity is initiated by design cognition and explains relationships between style and creativity. The book establishes a new cognitive theory of style and creativity in design and provides designers with insights into their own cognitive processes and styles of thinking, supporting a better understanding of the qualities present in their own design. An explanation of the nature of design cognition begins this work, with a look at how design knowledge is formulated, developed, structured and utilized, and how this utilization triggers style and creativity. The author goes on to review historical studies of style, considering a series of psychological experiments relating to the operational definition, degree, measurement, and creation of style. The work conceptually summarizes the recognition of individual style in products, as well as the creation of such styles as a process before reviewing studies on creativity from various disciplines, presenting case studies and reviewing works by master architects. Readers will discover how creativity is initiated by design cognition. A summary of the correlations between creativity and style, expressed as a conceptual formula describing the cognitive phenomenon of style and creativity concludes the work. The ideas presented here are applicable to all design fields, allowing designers to comprehend and improve their design processes to produce creative, stylistically unique products.

This thought-provoking monograph makes a multidisciplinary case for bilingualism as a possible enhancer of executive function, particularly cognitive control. Its central focus is the cognitive operations of the bilingual brain in processing two languages and whether they afford the brain a greater edge on neuroplasticity-in short, a cognitive advantage. Major issues and controversies in the debate are analyzed from cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistic, and integrative perspectives, with attention paid to commonly and rarely studied domains at work in bilingual processing. The author also pinpoints future areas for improved research such as recognizing the diversity of bilingualism, not simply in languages spoken but also in social context, as seen among immigrants and refugees. Included in the coverage: The evolution of bilingualism. What goes on in a bilingual mind? The core cognitive mechanisms. Cognitive advantage of bilingualism and its criticisms. Neuroscience of bilingualism. Bilingualism, context, and control. Attention, vision, and control in bilinguals. With its cogent takes on ongoing questions and emerging issues, Bilingualism and Cognitive Control is of immediate interest to bilingual researchers and practitioners interested in understanding the behavioral aspects and neurobiology of bilingualism and the dynamic character of the bilingual/multilingual/second language learner's mind, as well as the growing number of advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in the psychology/psycholinguistics of bilingualism, bilingual cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience.

This volume is the fruit of the 5th conference on Naturalistic Decision Making which focused on the importance of studying people who have some degree of expertise in the domain in which they make decisions. The substantive concerns pertain to how individuals and groups make decisions in professional and organizational settings, and to develop suitable methods for studying these questions rigorously.
This volume appeals to practitioners in business and government, as well as academics and students who are interested in naturalistic decision making.

Cognitive psychology is an enormous field with a rich history. One problem confronting instructors in cognitive psychology courses is covering such diverse topics as pattern recognition, attention, memory, language, decision-making, and problem solving. It is virtually impossible to both cover these topics and provide details regarding the beauty of the experimental studies that have tackled important topics in a single textbook. Cognitive Psychology: Key Readings helps fill this void and provides students with the opportunity to learn about the details of the actual articles and chapters that have had major influences in the development of this discipline. The classic papers were selected because they have been central in defining distinct areas of research or changing the way researchers think about a given topic. The reader can learn about the available literature that motivated a study, the theoretical rationale, and the details of the methods and results that were used to develop a better understanding of the topic. In this way, the reader can learn about the actual science of uncovering the theoretical issues, instead of simple overviews of the results. In addition, because cognitive psychology is constantly evolving, introductory sections to each topic are provided to help the reader better understand why a particular study is so important to the field. Along with an overview chapter that provides introductions to theoretical and methodological approaches that cognitive researchers have employed, Cognitive Psychology: Key Readings will begin to appreciate how scientists are unravelling how the mind works.

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The idea that some day robots may have emotions has captured the imagination of many and has been dramatized by robots and androids in such famous movies as 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL or Star Trek's Lt. Commander Data. By contrast, the editors of this book have assembled a panel of experts in neuroscience and artificial intelligence who have dared to tackle the issue of whether robots can have emotions from a purely scientific point of view. The study of the brain now usefully informs study of the social, communicative, adaptive, regulatory, and experiential aspects of emotion and offers support for the idea that we exploit our own psychological responses in order to feel others' emotions. The contributors show the many ways in which the brain can be analyzed to shed light on emotions. Fear, reward, and punishment provide structuring concepts for a number of investigations. Neurochemistry reveals the ways in which different "neuromodulators" such as serotonin, dopamine and opioids can affect the emotional balance of the brain. And studies of different regions such as the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex provide a view of the brain as a network of interacting subsystems. Related studies in artificial intelligence and robotics are discussed and new multi-level architectures are proposed that make it possible for emotions to be implanted. It is now an accepted task in robotics to build robots that perceived human expressions of emotion and can "express" simulated emotions to ease interactions with humans. Looking towards future innovations, some scientists posit roles for emotion as a powerful self-motivational tool as well as a way to work effectively in a group. But daunting questions remain as we ask what may be the nature of emotions in future generations of robots that share neither our biological heritage nor our need to share emotions with our fellow humans. All of these issues are covered in this timely and stimulating book which is written for researchers and graduate students in neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, robotics and artificial intelligence.

In The American Father, Wade C. Mackey documents a wealth of infor mation demonstrating the vast benefits to society when its children are raised in families with fathers. The biopsychosocial approach Mackey in human employs is consistent with the current treatment of topics development. This approach-which is grounded in a variety of diverse sources-assumes that we understand little about people when we study them a bit at a time; rather, the fullness of the individual requires a fullness of examination. For example, in the cases of fathers, we note that humans do not reproduce alone; after all, we are not an asexual species. No, human reproduction and its sequelae are social, just as clearly as they are biological, and involve the whole panoply of psychic function (mo tivation, sociability, intelligence, and the like). The evidence marshaled by Mackey indicates strongly that indi viduals and societies have an essential requirement for something more than mothering; they also need fathering. Much of the discourse and publication on fathers during the past several decades has been posited on a "more is better" model of male parenting in which it is seldom stated who it is better for-the father, the child, the mother, the couple, or the family. Further, much of this discussion infers that fathers are merely "Mr. Moms"; yet this is not so."

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.