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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology > General
Offering a unique focus on the development of human communication,
this book integrates and synthesizes a more comprehensive array of
research than most investigations of communicative development. As
such, it incorporates materials dealing with the development of
nonverbal communication, language, and cognition, and examines how
they are integrated in the growing child's everyday interaction.
This information is distilled into a set of key principles and
practices--culled from a variety of fields including developmental
and social psychology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and
communication--for parents or adults interested in child
development.
While this book does not offer an in-depth view in any one area,
it provides a comprehensive overview of the various components of
human communicative development and its significance for the
child's cognitive and emotional growth. It is quite clear that
developmental processes are constrained by multiple influences
whose interactions have just begun to be uncovered. Examining the
diverse facets of communicative development will enable
professionals to garner further insights into the mystery of human
communication.
Psychophysical theory exists in two distinct forms -- one ascribes
the explanation of phenomena and empirical laws to sensory
processes. Context effects arising through the use of particular
methods are an unwanted nuisance whose influence must be eliminated
so that one isolates the "true" sensory scale. The other considers
psychophysics only in terms of cognitive variables such as the
judgment strategies induced by instructions and response biases.
Sensory factors play a minor role in cognitive approaches.
This work admits the validity of both forms of theory by arguing
that the same empirical phenomena should be conceptualized in two
alternative, apparently contradictory, ways. This acceptance of
opposites is necessary because some empirical phenomena are best
explained in terms of sensory processes, while others are best
ascribed to central causes.
The complementarity theory stresses the "mutually completing"
nature of two distinct models. The first assigns importance to
populations of sensory neurons acting in the aggregate and is
formulated to deal with sensory effects. The second assigns
importance to judgment uncertainty and to the subject strategies
induced by experimental procedures. This model is formulated to
explain context effects. Throughout the text, the exposition is
interlaced with mathematics, graphs, and computer simulations
designed to reveal the complementary nature of psychophysical
explanations.
One of the most profound insights of the dynamic systems
perspective is that new structures resulting from the developmental
process do not need to be planned in advance, nor is it necessary
to have these structures represented in genetic or neurological
templates prior to their emergence. Rather, new structures can
emerge as components of the individual and the environment
self-organize; that is, as they mutually constrain each other's
actions, new patterns and structures may arise. This theoretical
possibility brings into developmental theory the important concept
of indeterminism--the possibility that developmental outcomes may
not be predictable in any simple linear causal way from their
antecedents.
This is the first book to take a critical and serious look at the
role of indeterminism in psychological and behavioral development.
* What is the source of this indeterminism?
* What is its role in developmental change?
* Is it merely the result of incomplete observational data or
error in measurement?
It reviews the concepts of indeterminism and determinism in their
historical, philosophical, and theoretical
perspectives--particularly in relation to dynamic systems
thinking--and applies these general ideas to systems of nonverbal
communication. Stressing the indeterminacy inherent to symbols and
meaning making in social systems, several chapters address the
issue of indeterminism from metaphorical, modeling, and narrative
perspectives. Others discuss those indeterministic processes within
the individual related to emotional, social, and cognitive
development.
Cognitive education brings together the disciplines of cognitive
psychology and education. This book provides an accessible
introduction to the field. It explains the concepts commonly found
in the cognitive psychology and cognitive education literatures,
theories and models of human thinking and intelligent behaviour,
and how these have been applied to psychoeducational assessment,
instruction, and the adaption of student behavior. The book
includes numerous examples to explain the concepts, theories, and
applications, and includes supplementary reading lists and study
questions.
Metacognition is a term that spans many sub-areas in psychology and
means different things to different people. A dominant view has
been that metacognition involves the monitoring of performance in
order to control cognition; however, it seems reasonable that much
of this control runs implicitly (i.e., without awareness). Newer
still is the field of implicit memory, and it has different
connotations to different sub-groups as well. The editor of this
volume takes it to mean that a prior experience affects behavior
without the individual's appreciation (ability to report) of this
influence.
Implicit memory and metacognition seem to be at two opposite ends
of the spectrum -- one seemingly conscious and control-oriented,
the other occurring without subjects' awareness. Do these processes
relate to each other in interesting ways, or do they operate
independently without reference to each other? The relatively novel
conjecture that much of the control of cognition operates at an
implicit level sparked Reder's desire to explore the
interrelationship between the two fields.
Developed within the last two decades, both fields are very new
and generate a great deal of excitement and research interest.
Hundreds of articles have been written about metacognition and
about implicit memory, but little if any material has been
published about the two areas in combination. In other words,
"Metacognition and Implicit Memory" is the first book attempting to
integrate what should be closely linked efforts in the study of
cognitive science.
The past fifteen years have witnessed an increasing interest in the
cognitive study of the bilingual. A major reason why psychologists,
psycholinguists, applied linguists, neuropsychologists, and
educators have pursued this topic at an accelerating pace
presumably is the acknowledgment by increasingly large numbers of
language researchers that the incidence of monolingualism in
individual language users may be lower than that of bilingualism.
This alleged numerical imbalance between monolinguals and
bilinguals may be expected to become larger due to increasing
international travel through, for instance, tourism and trade, to
the growing use of international communication networks, and to the
fact that in some parts of the world (i.e., Europe), the borders
between countries are effectively disappearing.
In addition to the growing awareness that bilinguals are very
common and may even outnumber monolinguals, there is the dawning
understanding that the bilingual mind is not simply the sum of the
cognitive processes associated with each of the two monolingual
modes, and that the two languages of bilingual may interact with
one another in complicated ways. To gain a genuinely universal
account of human cognition will therefore require a detailed
understanding of language use by both pure monolinguals as well as
bilinguals, unbalanced and balanced, and of the representations and
processes involved.
These two insights, that bilingualism is a common human condition
and that it may influence cognition, were presumably instrumental
in putting bilingualism on the agendas of many researchers of
cognition and language in recent years. But other reasons may have
played a role too: The study of bilingualism also provides a unique
opportunity to study the relation between language and thought. A
final reason for the growing interest in this area of research is
the awareness that bilingualism may confer the benefit of
broadening one's scope beyond the limits of one's own country and
culture.
This book serves as an excellent introduction to the important
topics in the psycholinguistic study of bilingualism. The chapters
represent a comprehensive and interrelated set of topics that form
the core of contemporary research on the psycholinguistics of
bilingualism. The issues raised within this perspective not only
increase our understanding of the nature of language and thought in
bilinguals but also of the basic nature of the mental architecture
that supports the ability to use more than one language.
The association between parents' behaviour and children's cognitive development is at the meeting place of several prominent theories of psychological development and a range of complex methodological and conceptual issues. On the one hand there are theories which argue that the impetus of development is within the child and is largely unaffected by his or her experience of social interaction: on the other are the commonsense experience of parents and educators, and the body of neo-Vygotskian theory, which would see the child's development as profoundly affected by social interaction or even constituted by it. The purpose of this book is to examine theories and evidence carefully in order to assess the causal links between parent behaviour and children's cognitive development. There is a considerable amount of evidence that suggests an association between parents' behaviour and their children's cognitive development; but there are many possible explanations for this association, including direct effects of parental teaching styles on the children's learning and motivation, differential social class practices and opportunities, genetic resemblances, and methodological artifacts. A close and critical look at a wide range of research and of theory is necessary if the causal questions are to be clarified. This book develops the current arguments about the nature and causes of cognitive development, providing a critical discussion of the available research and relating it to psychological theory. It is suitable for advanced students of psychology and education.
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Cognitive education brings together the disciplines of cognitive
psychology and education. This book provides an accessible
introduction to the field. It explains the concepts commonly found
in the cognitive psychology and cognitive education literatures,
theories and models of human thinking and intelligent behaviour,
and how these have been applied to psychoeducational assessment,
instruction, and the adaption of student behavior. The book
includes numerous examples to explain the concepts, theories, and
applications, and includes supplementary reading lists and study
questions.
Intuitive Imagery puts the discoveries of modern science to work
through a
simple, proven technology to meet the challenges of our fast-paced
changing world. This book shows you how to harness the wisdom of
your inner images to achieve peak performance in both business and
personal life. Results include greater creativity, better decision
making, enhanced productivity, the unlocking of blocked potential,
accelerated learning, increased success, and a sense of greater
well-being. Learning to use intuitive imaging is like finding a new
set of lenses through which to view the world. It helps us change
our beliefs about how we know what we know so we can begin to
restructure how we do what we do.
John B. Pehrson is president of Creative Change Technologies, a
training and consulting firm to individuals and organizations
focusing in the areas of creativity, deep team building, and
executive coaching. John is a former executive with DuPont and has
over 20 years of broad international business experience that
includes business and technology management, strategic planning,
product development, manufacturing, sales and marketing. He lives
in Signal Mountain, TN.
Susan E. Mehrtons is president of The Potlatch Group, a research
organization specializing in analysis of business trends related to
global evolution and social change. Her clients range from Fortune
500 companies like AT&T, DuPont, General Motors, and Sears to
smaller businesses, schools, and private foundations such as The
Institute of Noetic Sciences and the World Business Academy. Sue is
the co-author of Earthkeeping, an ecology text, and The Fourth
Wave, a vision of business in the 21st century. She lives in
Mineola, NY.
Grounded in the latest insights and discoveries in science.
Provides reliable, simple, and proven techniques.
Contains information that is practical and accessible.
The term "skill" encompasses an array of topics and issues. For
example, individuals are skilled in a variety of domains such as
chess, typing, air traffic control, or knitting; researchers study
skill in a variety of ways, including speed of acquisition,
accuracy of performance, and retention over time; and there are a
variety of approaches to the study of skill such as computer
modeling or experimental analysis. Contributing to the
understanding of whether, how, when, and why skills may decline as
a function of age is the goal of this volume.
This book is based on the Aging and Skill Conference sponsored by
the Center for Applied Cognitive Research on Aging. The broad focus
of the conference was to discuss cognitive theories underlying
age-related skill acquisition, transfer, and retention and to
discuss applications of these theories to such issues as
age-adaptive training, compensatory strategies and devices, and
utilization of new and existing technology. The contributors were
asked to discuss the cognitive theory relevant to their topic,
explain how the theory informs the field about aging, examine where
gaps exist among general cognitive theory in this area and theories
of aging, and demonstrate the practical relevance of the theory to
enhancing or enabling activities of daily living--for work, home,
or leisure--for older adults.
This is the first book to focus exclusively on aging and skill. It
covers a range of abilities, provides the theoretical basis for the
current status of age-related differences in skill, and offers
direct evidence of the applicability of research on proficiency to
aspects of daily living. Each chapter was written either by an
expert in the field of aging, or by an expert in the field of
skill--many expert in both areas.
How is information represented in the nervous system? How is that
information manipulated and processed? These are some of the more
important and challenging questions for neuroscientists and
psychologists today. Understanding brain functions, especially the
neural mechanisms of higher cognitive processes such as thinking,
reasoning, judging, and decision making, are the subjects covered
by the research in the chapters of this book. They describe recent
progress in four major research areas: visual functions, motor
functions, memory functions, and prefrontal functions. Readers will
obtain an excellent idea of how the nervous system internally
represents the outer world, how the nervous system constructs
images or schemas to perceive the outer world or react to the
environment, and how the nervous system processes information using
internal representations - topics that are at the forefront of
brain science today.
My writing career has been, at least in this one respect,
idiosyncratic: it had to mark and chart, step by step, its own
peculiar champaign. My earliest papers, beginning in 1942, were
technical articles in this or that domain of Uralic linguistics,
ethnography, and folklore, with a sprinkling of contributions to
North and South American linguistics. In 1954, my name became
fecklessly associated with psycholinguistics, then, successively,
with explorations in my thology, religious studies, and stylistic
problems. It now takes special effort for me to even revive the
circumstances under which I came to publish, in 1955, a hefty tome
on the supernatural, another, in 1958, on games, and yet another,
in 1961, utilizing a computer for extensive sorting of literary
information. By 1962, I had edged my way into animal communication
studies. Two years after that, I first whiffled through what Gavin
Ewart evocatively called "the tulgey wood of semiotics." In 1966, I
published three books which tem porarily bluffed some of my friends
into conjecturing that I was about to meta morphose into a
historiographer of linguistics. The topmost layer in my scholarly
stratification dates from 1976, when I started to compile what
eventually became my "semiotic tetralogy," of which this volume may
supposably be the last. In the language of "Jabberwocky," the word
"tulgey" is said to connote variability and evasiveness. This
notwithstanding, the allusion seems to me apt."
Early emotional development, emotional regulation, and the links
between emotion and social or cognitive functioning in atypically
developing children have not received much attention. This lack is
due in part to the priorities given to the educational and
therapeutic needs of these children. Yet an understanding of the
basic emotional processes in children with atypical development can
only serve to promote more effective strategies for teaching and
intervening in the lives of these children and their families and
may contribute to our understanding of basic emotional processes as
well.
When referring to "emotions," the editors mean some complex set of
processes or abilities, whether or not the topic is normal or
atypical development. Specifically, they use the term "emotion" to
refer to at least three things -- emotional expressions, emotional
states, and emotional experiences. The focus of this volume, these
three aspects of emotional life are affected by socialization
practices, maturational change, and individual biological
differences including, in this case, differences in children as a
function of disability. Contributors examine the development of
emotions in children with organic or psychological disorders as
well as those in compromised social contexts making this volume of
prime importance to developmental, clinical, and social
psychologists, educators, and child mental health experts.
Concern with stress and coping has a long history in biomedical,
psychological and sociological research. The inadequacy of
simplistic models linking stressful life events and adverse
physical and psychological outcomes was pointed out in the early
1980s in a series of seminal papers and books. The issues and
theoretical models discussed in this work shaped much of the
subsequent research on this topic and are reflected in the papers
in this volume. The shift has been away from identifying
associations between risks and outcomes to a focus on factors and
processes that contribute to diversity in response to risks. Based
on the Family Research Consortium's fifth summer institute, this
volume focuses on stress and adaptability in families and family
members. The papers explore not only how a variety of stresses
influence family functioning but also how family process moderates
and mediates the contribution of individual and environmental risk
and protective factors to personal adjustment. They reveal the
complexity of current theoretical models, research strategies and
analytic approaches to the study of risk, resiliency and
vulnerability along with the central role risk, family process and
adaptability play in both normal development and childhood
psychopathology.
Recently, there has been a renewal of interest in the broad and
loosely bounded range of phenomena called deception and
self-deception. This volume addresses this interest shared by
philosophers, social and clinical psychologists, and more recently,
neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. Expert contributors
provide timely, reliable, and insightful coverage of the normal
range of errors in perception, memory, and behavior. They place
these phenomena on a continuum with various syndromes and
neuropsychiatric diseases where falsehood in perception,
self-perception, cognition, and behaviors are a peculiar sign.
Leading authorities examine the various forms of "mythomania,"
deception, and self-deception ranging from the mundane to the
bizarre such as imposture, confabulations, minimization of
symptomatology, denial, and anosognosia. Although the many diverse
phenomena discussed here share a family resemblance, they are
unlikely to have a common neurological machinery. In order to reach
an explanation for these phenomena, a reliable pattern of lawful
behavior must be delineated. It would then be possible to develop
reasonable explanations based upon the underlying neurobiological
processes that give rise to deficiencies designated as the
mythomanias. The chapters herein begin to provide an outline of
such a development. Taken as a whole, the collection is consistent
with the emerging gospel indicating that neither the machinery of
"nature" nor the forces of "nurture" taken alone are capable of
explaining what makes cognition and behaviors aberrant.
Making Sense of Inner Sense
"'Terra cognita'" is "terra incognita." It is difficult to find
someone not taken abackand fascinated by the incomprehensible but
indisputable fact: there are material systems which are aware of
themselves. Consciousness is self-cognizing code. During "homo
sapiens's" relentness and often frustrated search for
self-understanding various theories of consciousness have been and
continue to be proposed. However, it remains unclear whether and at
what level the problems of consciousness and intelligent thought
can be resolved. Science's greatest challenge is to answer the
fundamental question: what precisely does a cognitive state amount
to in physical terms?
Albert Einstein insisted that the fundamental ideas of science are
essentially simple and can be expressed in a language
comprehensible to everyone. When one thinks about the complexities
which present themselves in modern physics and even more so in the
physics of life, one may wonder whether Einstein really meant what
he said. Are we to consider the fundamental problem of the mind,
whose understanding seems to lie outside the limits of the mind, to
be essentially simple too? Knowledge is neither automatic nor
universally deductive. Great new ideas are typically
counterintuitive and outrageous, and connecting them by simple
logical steps to existing knowledge is often a hard undertaking.
The notion of a tensor was needed to provide the general theory of
relativity; the notion of entropy had to be developed before we
could get full insight into the laws of thermodynamics; the notice
of information bit is crucial for communication theory, just as the
concept of a Turing machine is instrumental in the deep
understanding of a computer. To understand something, consciousness
must reach an adequate intellectual level, even more so in order to
understand itself. Reality is full of unending mysteries, the true
explanation of which requires very technical knowledge, often
involving notions not given directly to intuition. Even though the
entire content and the results of this study are contained in the
eight pages of the mathematical abstract, it would be unrealistic
and impractical to suggest that anyone can gain full insight into
the theory that presented here after just reading abstract.
In our quest for knowledge we are exploring the remotest areas of
the macrocosm and probing the invisible particles of the microcosm,
from tiny neutrinos and strange quarks to black holes and the Big
Bang. But the greatest mystery is very close to home: the greatest
mystery is human consciousness. The question before us is whether
the logical brain has evolved to a conceptual level where it is
able to understand itself.
The recent evolution of western societies has been characterized by
an increasing emphasis on information and communication. As the
amount of available information increases, however, the user --
worker, student, citizen -- faces a new problem: selecting and
accessing relevant information. More than ever it is crucial to
find efficient ways for users to interact with information systems
in a way that prevents them from being overwhelmed or simply
missing their targets. As a result, hypertext systems have been
developed as a means of facilitating the interactions between
readers and text. In hypertext, information is organized as a
network in which nodes are text chunks (e.g., lists of items,
paragraphs, pages) and links are relationships between the nodes
(e.g., semantic associations, expansions, definitions, examples --
virtually any kind of relation that can be imagined between two
text passages). Unfortunately, the many ways in which these
hypertext interfaces can be designed has caused a complexity that
extends far beyond the processing abilities of regular users.
Therefore, it has become widely recognized that a more rational
approach based on a thorough analysis of information users' needs,
capacities, capabilities, and skills is needed. This volume seeks
to meet that need.
From a user-centered perspective -- between systems and users --
this volume presents theoretical and empirical research on the
cognitive processes involved in using hypertext. In so doing, it
illustrates three main approaches to the design of hypertext
systems:
*cognitive, which examines how users process multilayered
hypertext structures;
*ergonomical, which explores how users interact with the design
characteristics of hardware and software; and
*educational, which studies the learning objectives, frequency and
duration of hypertext sessions, type of reading activity, and the
user's learning characteristics.
This volume also tries to provide answers for the questions that
have plagued hypertext research:
*What is hypertext good for?
*Who is hypertext good for?
*If it is useful for learning and instruction, then what type?
*What particular cognitive skills are needed to interact
successfully with a hypertext system? Anyone interested in the
fields of computer science, linguistics, psychology, education, and
graphic design will find this volume intriguing, informative, and a
definitive starting point for future research in the field of
hypertext.
Recognizing the characteristics of children with learning
disabilities and deciding how to help them is a problem faced by
schools all over the world. Although some disorders are fairly
easily recognizable (e.g., mental retardation) or very specific to
single components of performance and quite rare (e.g.,
developmental dyscalculia), schools must consider much larger
populations of children with learning difficulties who cannot
always be readily classified. These children present high-level
learning difficulties that affect their performance on a variety of
school tasks, but the underlying problem is often their difficulty
in understanding written text. In many instances, despite good
intellectual abilities and a superficial ability to cope with
written texts and to use language appropriately, some children do
not seem to grasp the most important elements, or cannot find the
pieces of information they are looking for. Sometimes these
difficulties are not immediately detected by the teacher in the
early school years. They may be hidden because the most obvious
early indicators of reading progress in the teacher's eyes do not
involve comprehension of written texts or because the first texts a
child encounters are quite simple and reflect only the difficulty
level of the oral messages (sentences, short stories, etc.) with
which the child is already familiar. However, as years go by and
texts get more complex, comprehension difficulties will become
increasingly apparent and increasingly detrimental to effective
school learning. In turn, studying, assimilating new information,
and many other situations requiring text comprehension -- from
problem solving to reasoning with linguistic contents -- could be
affected.
Problems with decoding, dyslexia, and language disorders have
attracted more interest from researchers than have specific
comprehension problems and have occupied more room in specialized
journals. Normal reading comprehension has also been a favorite
with researchers. However, scarce interest has been paid to
subjects who have comprehension difficulties. This book is an
attempt to remedy this situation. In so doing, this volume answers
the following questions:
* Does a reading comprehension problem exist in schools?
* How important and widespread is the problem?
* Is the problem specific?
* How can a reading comprehension difficulty be defined and
identified?
* Does the "syndrome" have a single pattern or can different
subtypes be identified?
* What are the main characteristics associated with a reading
comprehension difficulty?
* When can other well-identified problems add to our understanding
of reading comprehension difficulties?
* Which educational strategies are effective in preventing and
treating reading comprehension difficulties?
* What supplementary information can we get from an international
perspective?
* unique formatting per study, with a graphic page highlighting the
research findings, and an adjacent page with accompanying research
and implications * themed and chronological arrangement of studies
will allow readers to access particular studies with ease * covers
areas which are of great interest to parents, such as memory and
revision, the impact of sleep and mobile devices on learning,
parental attitudes and expectations and children's behaviour. *
will enable parents to increase their understanding of crucial
psychological research so that they can help their children improve
how they think, feel and behave in school.
Introduced one hundred years ago, film has since become part of our
lives. For the past century, however, the experience offered by
fiction films has remained a mystery. Questions such as why adult
viewers cry and shiver, and why they care at all about fictional
characters -- while aware that they contemplate an entirely staged
scene -- are still unresolved. In addition, it is unknown why
spectators find some film experiences entertaining that have a
clearly aversive nature outside the cinema. These and other
questions make the psychological status of "emotions" allegedly
induced by the fiction film highly problematic.
Earlier attempts to answer these questions have been limited to a
few genre studies. In recent years, film criticism and the theory
of film structure have made use of psychoanalytic concepts which
have proven insufficient in accounting for the diversity of film
induced affect. In contrast, academic psychology -- during the
century of its existence -- has made extensive study of emotional
responses provoked by viewing fiction film, but has taken the role
of film as a natural stimulus completely for granted. The present
volume bridges the gap between critical theories of film on the one
hand, and recent psychological theory and research of human emotion
on the other, in an attempt to explain the emotions provoked by
fiction film.
This book integrates insights on the narrative structure of
fiction film including its themes, plot structure, and characters
with recent knowledge on the cognitive processing of natural
events, and narrative and person information. It develops a
theoretical framework for systematically describing emotion in the
film viewer. The question whether or not film produces genuine
emotion is answered by comparing affect in the viewer with emotion
in the real world experienced by persons witnessing events that
have personal significance to them. Current understanding of the
psychology of emotions provides the basis for identifying critical
features of the fiction film that trigger the general emotion
system. Individual emotions are classified according to their
position in the affect structure of a film -- a larger system of
emotions produced by one particular film as a whole. Along the way,
a series of problematic issues is dealt with, notably the "reality"
of the emotional stimulus in film, the "identification" of the
viewer with protagonists on screen, and the necessity of the
viewer's cooperation in arriving at a genuine emotion. Finally, it
is argued that film-produced emotions are genuine emotions in
response to an artificial stimulus. Film can be regarded as a
fine-tuned machine for a continuous stream of emotions that are
entertaining after all.
The work paves the way for understanding and, in principle,
predicting emotions in the film viewer using existing psychological
instruments of investigation. Dealing with the problems of
film-induced affect and rendering them accessible to formal
modeling and experimental method serves a wider interest of
understanding aesthetic emotion -- the feelings that man-made
products, and especially works of art, can evoke in the
beholder.
Recently, research on the ways in which goals, affect, and
self-regulation influence one another has enjoyed an upsurge. New
findings are being published and new theories are being developed
to integrate these findings. This volume reports on the latest of
this work, including a substantial amount of data and theory that
has not yet been published. Emanating from a conference exploring
affect as both a cause and effect in various social contexts, this
book examines some of the complex and reciprocal relationships
among goals, self structures, feelings, thoughts, and behavior. The
chapters address:
*the effects of intrinsic versus extrinsic goals;
*the different effects of approach versus avoidance goals;
*the role of awareness in goal pursuit and affective states;
*the meaning of affective states in relation to goal
attainment;
*the impact of hedonistic concerns as motivational factors;
*how people regulate their moods; and
*the role of the self in affective experiences.
Memory has long been ignored by rhetoricians because the written
word has made memorization virtually obsolete. Recently however, as
part of a revival of interest in classical rhetoric, scholars have
begun to realize that memory offers vast possibilities for today's
writers. Synthesizing research from rhetoric, psychology,
philosophy, and literary and composition studies, this volume
brings together many historical and contemporary theories of
memory. Yet its focus is clear: memory is a generator of knowledge
and a creative force which deserves attention at the beginning of
and throughout the writing process.
This volume emphasizes the importance of recognizing memory's
powers in an age in which mass media influence us all and
electronic communication changes the way we think and write. It
also addresses the importance of the individual memory and voice in
an age which promotes conformity. Written in a strong, lively
personal manner, the book covers a great deal of scholarly
material. It is never overbearing, and the extensive bibliography
offers rich vistas for further study.
Focusing on the principles and applications of chaotic thinking,
this text seeks to promote a more general understanding and
acceptance of this cognitive style. It may help people deal more
effectively with chaotic situations, such as economic crises,
career changes, and relationship skills.
Cognitive interference refers to unwanted, often disturbing
thoughts which intrude on a person's life. This text examines the
effects of this thinking on behaviour, particularly how stress can
distort cognition and performance and the role it plays in social
maladjustment and slow learning.
The power of odors to unlock human memory is celebrated in
literature and anecdote, but poorly documented by science. Odors --
perhaps more than other stimuli -- are widely believed to evoke
vivid and complex past experiences easily. Yet in contrast to the
frequency with which odors are thought to evoke memories of the
past, scientific evidence is thus far scant.
For years, voluminous data have been collected on odor
sensitivity, whereas relatively few studies exist on memory for
odors per se. Moreover, the memory data that do exist are thus far
only poorly integrated with the most modern attitudes on human
memory. The major goal of this volume is to point the way toward a
better state of affairs, one in which the study of odor memory is
legitimatized as a proper specialization and is informed by the
most promising ideas in the mainstream study of memory. This volume
explores three tendencies in modern memory theory that have not yet
sufficiently penetrated the odor-memory work: memory coding, memory
and knowledge, and implicit and explicit memory.
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