Reflecting the focus of a Jean Piaget Symposium entitled Biology and Knowledge: Structural Constraints on Development, this volume presents many of the emergent themes discussed. Among these themes are: Structural constraints on cognitive development and learning come in many shapes and forms and involve appeal to more than one level of analysis. To postulate innate knowledge is not to deny that humans can acquire new concepts. It is unlikely that there is only one learning mechanism, even if one prefers to work with general as opposed to domain-specific mechanisms. The problems of induction with respect to concept acquisition are even harder than originally thought.

Each child is spoken to by genetic heritage and by the rich current set of interactional environments -- familial, local community, and broader cultural voices. Using past structures and paradigms of scholarship, scholars seek to understand what the child achieves in language and how. The tools available for this research are not static but evolve jointly through the sharing of information, and with each "brief moment in time" in efforts to look at children's languages "just as they are." Containing a wide range of contributions from developmental approaches to phonological ability, the lexicon, the grammar as well as conversation and sign language, this text details the interrelated research and theorizing discussed at a recent Budapest conference. The meeting of the International Association for the Study of Child Languages was particularly rich in the diversity of scholars present, which is highly appropriate because such diversity is integral to an informed study of children's language.

The major goal of this book is to explore and integrate all that is scientifically known about the utility of magical plans and strategies for coping with life's inevitable absurdities. Make-believe has great adaptive value and helps the average individual to function better in cultures saturated with puzzling contradictions. This book traces the origins of pretending (illusion-construction) and the developmental phases of this skill. Further, it analyzes how parents depend on pretending to secure conformity and self-control from their children. It unravels the ways in which make-believe is utilized to defend against death-anxiety and feelings of fragility. It examines the relationship between pretending and the classical defense mechanisms -- and particularly weighs the evidence bearing on the potential protective power of embracing religious beliefs. Finally, it defines the diverse contributions of make-believe to the construction of the self-concept, the defensive maneuvers typifying psychopathology, and the maintenance of somatic health. In short, this book pulls together a spectrum of scientific information concerning the defensive value of illusory make-believe in coping with those aspects of life -- such as death, loss, suffering, and injustice -- that are experienced as unreasonable and beyond understanding. The volume is unique not only in the breadth of the literature it analyzes but also in demonstrating the contribution of make-believe to both the psychological and somatic aspects of behavior. No previous work has documented in such detail and across so many domains how basic the capacity to engage in make-believe is to human adaptation.

Comprised of papers and commentaries from the Earlscourt Symposium on Childhood Aggression held in Toronto, Canada, this volume reflects the Earlscourt Child and Family Centre's commitment to linking clinical practice to identifiable research-based interventions which are known to be effective in the prevention and treatment of antisocial behavior in children. The education of human services professionals has typically failed to train individuals to work with specific client populations, providing a generalist approach grounded in theoretical assumptions and professional values rather than research and empirical studies. This compelling book serves to fill this gap in professional education in the area of childhood aggression. Representing substantial accomplishments in the advancement of an understanding of the plight of aggressive children and how best to ameliorate their often unpredictable and painful situations, this text allows for cautious optimism that empirical research can have practical consequences for aggressive children and their prospects for a better life. As such, it is a truly important information resource for professionals in the fields of developmental psychology and counseling.

In this book, William R. Uttal continues his analysis and critique of theories of mind. This book considers theories that are based on macroneural responses (such as those obtained from fMRI) that represent the averaged or cumulative responses of many neurons. The analysis is carried out with special emphasis on the logical and conceptual difficulties in developing a theory but with special attention to some of the current attempts to go from these cumulative responses to explanations of the grand question of how the mind is generated by the brain. While acknowledging the importance of these macroneural techniques in the study of the anatomy and physiology of the brain, Uttal concludes that this macroneural approach is not likely to produce a valid neural theory of cognition because the critical information-the states of the individual neurons-involved in brain activity becoming mental activity is actually lost in the process of summation. Controversial topics are considered in detail including discussions of empirical, logical, and technological barriers to theory building in cognitive neuroscience.

Originally published in German in 1923, this English edition was first published in 1931. From the translators preface: "Experimentelle Psychologie is characterized by an excellent summarizing of the most recent experimental data and by a spirit of fairness which it exhibits in organizing facts under general theoretical principles. Besides informing the reader, it stimulates him by critical remarks and suggestions for further thinking and experimentation." Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

Originally published in 1981, this volume brings together contributions by several of the authors whose research had contributed significantly to the recent advances in our understanding of the role of cognitive processes in stereotyping and intergroup behaviour at the time. While each chapter reflects a cognitive approach to its subject matter, a broad range of topics, issues, and contexts is addressed by this collection of authors. In the introductory chapter the authors present an historical overview of psychological research on stereotyping, discussing historical trends in this literature and summarizing the conceptual orientations which had guided research in this area at the time. This chapter not only provides useful background information for the reader but also presents a broader context within which the current cognitively oriented research, on which the remaining chapters focus, can be viewed. Each of the next six chapters reports on integrative program of studies bearing on some aspect of the relationship of cognitive functioning to stereotyping and/or intergroup behaviour.

A study of hedonism could conceivably operate on a massive scale. This book, however, concentrates specifically on the hedonics of taste. The editor notes some important reasons for limiting the argument in this manner. First of all, this is an area of hedonics in which a handful of experimenters continued to do research during a period when hedonism might have been lost altogether. Secondly, the past ten years have seen quite a number of researchers turn their attention to taste preferences, and so it seems appropriate to celebrate the fact that new findings can be incorporated into a very old conceptual framework: the ancient concept of hedonism. The contributors approach their subject from many different angles. Historical, conceptual, and methodological chapters are presented; developmental aspects, psychological substrates, and the social considerations of hedonics are discussed. This volume offers viewpoints from dataphiles and theorists, mechanists and cognitivists, unifiers and disrupters -- a diversity that reflects the vital state of psychology today.

To present a timely analysis applying the rich resources of the current cognitive revolution, the contributors to this volume emphasize symbiotic interactions between theoretical/laboratory and applied/real-life approaches. A direct result of a symposium on general experimental psychology held during the International Congress of Applied Psychology (ICAP) in Kyoto, this volume includes papers focusing on topics in cognitive psychology that can be applied to school, business/industry, and daily life. The 20 contributors to ICAP represent not only a uniformly high level of excellence, but also a unique collection of talent from five nations: Canada, England, France, Japan, and the United States. This combined intelligence offers critical analyses of cognitive approaches to enhancing work efficiency, educating the labor force, coping with anxiety, improving mental hygiene, understanding the aging population, and exploring aesthetics in music.

As Nixon's unpopularity increased during Watergate, his nose and jowls grew to impossible proportions in published caricatures. Yet the caricatures remained instantly recognizable. Caricatures can even be superportraits, with the paradoxical quality of being more like the face than the face itself. How can we recognize such distorted images? Do caricatures derive their power from some special property of a face recognition system or from some more general property of recognition systems? What kind of mental representations and recognition processes make caricatures so effective? What can the power of caricatures tell us about recognition? In seeking to answer these questions, the author assembles clues from a variety of sources: the invention and development of caricatures by artists, the exploitation of extreme signals in animal communication systems, and studies of how humans, other animals and connectionist recognition systems respond to caricatures. Several conclusions emerge. The power of caricatures is ubiquitous. Caricatures can be superportraits for humans, other animals and computer recognition systems. They are effective for a variety of stimuli, not just faces. They are effective whether objects are mentally represented as deviations from a norm or average member of the class, or as absolute feature values on a set of dimensions. Exaggeration of crucial norm-deviation features, distinctiveness, and resemblance to caricatured memory traces are all potential sources of the power of caricature. Superportraits will be of interest to students of cognitive psychology, perception, the visual arts and animal behavior.

In this timely and comprehensive text, Cesare Cornoldi and Tomaso Vecchi describe their recently developed experimental approach to the investigation of visuo-spatial cognition, based upon the analysis of individual differences. A review of the most influential theoretical advances in the study of visuo-spatial cognition is presented, including both critical analysis and comparisons between the distinct approaches. In addition, the authors describe recent research into memory for spatial configurations, mental manipulation and the active integration of visuo-spatial information. This includes studies on the effects of congenital blindness on mental imagery abilities, developmental and age-related modifications, gender effects, and the role of genetic syndromes in determining visuo-spatial abilities. The authors draw together these distinct areas of research and integrate the findings within an innovative framework of working memory. This text will be a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychology, as well as researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and neuroscience.

This book provides an analysis of the social representations of leading self-help genres, including neurolinguistic programming, cognitive self-help therapy, mindfulness, self-management, self-esteem, self-leadership and self-control. Exploring the globalised therapeutic culture of today, the book argues that psychology as 'science' is often abandoned to aid the individual pursuit for self-realization and self-optimization. Opposing the view that self-help culture is external to psychology, Madsen argues that it is firmly embedded within psychology, playing an important role in people's lives. Each chapter traces and critically interprets a range of self-help philosophies and techniques, examining the claims of self-help literature to represent the most innovative psychological, medical or neurobiological research. Discussing each genre in turn, chapters examine key research alongside self-help literature to explore the effectiveness and impact of leading self-help genres in various social contexts and environments. The book offers a contemporary critical overview of issues concerning self-help, combining critical psychology with the theory of social representation to provide a broad perspective on self-help as a valid psychology. Optimizing the Self will be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of social representation, critical and cultural psychology and theory, clinical psychology, and the sociology of culture and science. The book will also be of use to critical and cultural psychologists and theorists, as well as clinical psychologists.

This book bridges the gap between basic memory research and mnemonic applications through a careful analysis of the processes that underlie effective memory aids. The book traces the history of mnemonics, examines popular techniques, and discusses the current relevance of mnemonics to both psychological researchers and those seeking to improve their memory. Using a unique approach (termed "mnemonology"), the authors seek not necessarily to promote specific mnemonic techniques, but to provide information which will allow one to improve memory by creating their own mnemonics.

Human beings are an intrinsically gregarious species - our personal relationships are of immense interest to us and are a key factor in achieving happiness and well being. From the moment of birth, humans crave love and intimacy and we devote much energy to creating and maintaining successful personal relationships throughout our personal and our working lives. However, modern industrialized societies present a particularly challenging environment for sustaining rewarding personal relationships. Understanding how people initiate, develop, maintain, and terminate relationships is one of the core issues in psychology, and the subject matter of this book. Contributors to this volume are all leading researchers in relationship science, and they seek here to explore and integrate the subtle influence that evolutionary, socio-cultural, and intra-psychic (cognitive, affective and motivational) variables play in relationship processes. In addition to discussing the latest advances in areas of relationship research, they also advocate an expanded theoretical approach that incorporates many of the insights gained from evolutionary psychology, social cognition, and research on affect and motivation. The contributions should be highly relevant to researchers, teachers, students, laypersons and to everyone who is interested in the subtleties of human relationships. The book is also highly recommended to clinical, health, and relationship professionals who deal with relationship issues in their daily work.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

There is considerable debate over the extent to which cognitive tasks can be learned non-consciously or implicitly. In recent years a large number of studies have demonstrated a discrepancy between explicit knowledge and measured performance. This book presents an overview of these studies and attempts to clarify apparently disparate results by placing them in a coherent theoretical framework. It draws on evidence from neuropsychological and computational modelling studies as well as the many laboratory experiments. Chapter one sets out the background to the large number of recent studies on implicit learning. It discusses research on implicit memory, perception without awareness, and automaticity. It attempts to set the implicit - explicit distinction in the context of other relevant dichotomies in the literature. Chapter two presents an overview of research on the control of complex systems, from Broadbent (1977) through to the present day. It looks at the accessibility of control task knowledge, as well as whether there is any other evidence for a distinction between implicit and explicit modes of learning. Chapter three critically reviews studies claiming to show that people can acquire concepts without being verbally aware of the basis on which they are responding. It shows that concept formation can be implicit in some sense but not in others. Chapter four investigates the claim that people can learn sequential information in an implicit way. Chapter five looks at whether computational modelling can elucidate the nature of implicit learning. It examines the feasibility of different exemplar connectionist models in accounting for performance in concept learning, sequence learning, and control task experiments. Chapter six reviews evidence concerning dissociations between implicit and explicit knowledge in various neuropsychological syndromes. Finally, chapters seven and eight discuss the many practical and theoretical implications of the research.

It is argued in this book that there are three major approaches to anxiety. First, there is anxiety as an emotional state. Second, there is trait anxiety as a dimension of personality. Third, there is anxiety as a set of anxiety disorders. What is attempted is to produce a unified theory of anxiety which integrates all these major approaches. According to this unified theory, there are four sources of information which influence the level of experienced anxiety: (1) experimental stimulation; (2) internal physiological activity; (3) internal cognitions, (e.g., worries); and (4) one's own behaviour. The unified theory is essentially based on a cognitive approach. More specifically, it is assumed that individual differences in experienced anxiety between those high and low in trait anxiety depend largely on cognitive biases. It is also assumed that the various anxiety disorders depend on cognitive biases, and that the main anxiety disorders differ in terms of the source of information most affected by such biases (e.g., social phobics have biased interpretation of their own behaviour). In sum, this book presents a general theory of anxiety from the cognitive perspective. It is intended that this theory will influence theory and research on emotion, personality, and the anxiety disorders. Correction notice: Christos Halkiopoulos should have been credited for his role as the inventor of the Dot Probe Paradigm and for the design and execution of the experiment discussed in C. D. Spielberger, I. G. Sarason, Z. Kulczar, and J. Van Heck (Eds.), Stress and Emotion, Vol. 14. London: Hemisphere.

Spatial cognition is a broad field of enquiry, emerging from a wide range of disciplines and incorporating a wide variety of paradigms that have been employed with human and animal subjects. This volume is part of a two- volume handbook reviewing the major paradigms used in each of the contributors' research areas.; This volume considers the issues of neurophysiological aspects of spatial cognition, the assessment of cognitive spatial deficits arising from neural damage in humans and animals, and the observation of spatial behaviours in animals in their natural habitats.; This handbook should be of interest to new and old students alike. The student new to spatial research can be brought up-to- speed with a particular range of techniques, made aware of the background and pitfalls of particular approaches, and directed toward useful sources. For seasoned researchers, the handbook provides a rapid scan of the available tools that they might wish to consider as alternatives when wishing to answer a particular "spatial" research problem.

This book is the fourth in a series based on conferences sponsored by the Metroplex Institute for Neural Dynamics (MIND), an interdisciplinary organization of Dallas-Fort Worth area neural network professionals in both academia and industry. This topic was chosen as the focus for this special issue because of the increasing interest by neuroscientists and psychologists in both rhythmic and chaotic activity patterns observed in the nervous system. Neither the mathematical structure of neural oscillations nor their functional significance is precisely understood. There are a great many open problems in both the structure and function of neural oscillations, whether rhythmic, chaotic, or a combination of the two, and many of these problems are dealt with in the chapters of this book.

The chapters in this volume are the edited versions of invited addresses to the XXVI International Congress of Psychology held in Montreal in August 1996. As one major goal of the Congress was to promote communication among specializations in scientific psychology, the speakers were asked to survey their research area and present their own work in a way that would be accessible to their colleagues in other areas. Another purpose of the meeting was to bring researchers together from different parts of the world, reflecting their different approaches to the scientific study of mind, brain, and behavior. Consequently, the eminent researchers who have written the twenty-six chapters included in the present volume were drawn from universities and research institutes in North America, Europe, Japan, Russia, Israel, and New Zealand. The chapters cover a range of topics in human and animal experimental psychology. The first section deals with psychobiological processes - the interplay of body and mind in determining intelligence, stress, and pain. The next five chapters address current issues in neuropsychology and neuroscience, including the neural correlates of attention and vision. A third section looks at learning processes in humans and animals, and a fourth deals with a range of topics in perception and cognition. The final five chapters take a developmental perspective, presenting theoretical and empirical analyses of the acquisition of perceptual and cognitive abilities. Overall, the collection illustrates the growing trend to break down traditional barriers between areas of experimental psychology; there are many instances of profitable interactions between researchers studying aspects of behavior and those studying the biological bases of these behaviors. The twenty-six chapters give an excellent overview of current research in scientific psychology.

The second volume in the Advances in Personality Psychology series, this book presents an authoritative collection of works by leading experts in the field. It focuses on three of the major issues in personality psychology: personality, affect and arousal; personality and intelligence; and personality structure. The first part of the book seeks to analyse cognitive biases dependent on anxiety and the biological foundations of thought and action. It also looks at the influence of temperamental traits on reaction to traumatic events. In the second part, contributions consider the mutual relations between personality and intelligence, the similarities and differences between personality and intelligence, and the cognitive mechanisms of human intelligence and personality. The final part analyses personality structure across cultures and presents a model of personality relevant to situational descriptions. All the authors are experienced and renowned experts in the field of personality psychology. The volume incorporates critical reviews, bringing the reader up-to-date with key issues, and unique data from contemporary empirical research projects, reflecting the diversity and vigour of current work on personality psychology.

This book bridges the gap between models of human behavior that are based on cognitive task analysis and those based on neural networks. The author argues that these approaches are incomplete and not properly related to each other. His synthesis reconciles the very different conceptualizations of human memory assumed by these two approaches by assuming that 'what the brain remembers' is not a collection of symbols or neurons or even networks of either of these, but rather how to coordinate behavior in time, relating different modalities of conception and movement. A second premise is that behavior sequences are categorized, with perceptual categorizations (sounds, images) comprising the first order of categorization and conceptual categorizations of perceptions and actions in time comprising the second order. The conceptual categorizations are themselves sequenced and categorized, corresponding to the familiar classification hierarchies in cognitive models. Inspired by Bartlett's work, the author seeks to develop a theory of "process memory"--memory for experience in time. Following the methodology of situated cognition, he finds clues in the particulars of human activity, such as typing errors, how a computer interface is used, how a child learns to play in a swimming pool, odd limitations in language comprehension, and so on. Throughout, he examines existing (and often famous) cognitive and neural models with respect to these phenomena. In each case, he attempts to show that the experienced behavior can be understood as sequences of categories being reactivated, substituted, and composed. Ultimately, this analysis is shown to be the link that may lead to improvement of both symbolic and neurally based models of memory and behavior, with concomitant implications for cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science as a whole.

Over the past decade, the question of whether there is a mental logic has become subject to considerable debate. There have been attacks by critics who believe that all reasoning uses mental models and return attacks on mental-models theory. This controversy has invaded various journals and has created issues between mental logic and the biases-and-heuristics approach to reasoning, and the content-dependent theorists. However, despite its pertinence to current issues in cognition, few cognitive scientists really know what the mental-logic theory is, and misapprehensions are prevalent. This volume is a comprehensive presentation of the theory of mental logic and its implications for cognition and development, including the acquisition of language. The theory offered here has three parts. Part I is the mental logic per se that contains a set of inference schemas. Part II is a reasoning program that applies the schemas in lines of reasoning, including a direct-reasoning routine and more sophisticated indirect-reasoning strategies. Part III of the theory is pragmatic, proposing that the basic meaning of each logic particle is in the inferences that are sanctioned by its inference schemas.

Computational models offer tools for exploring the nature of human cognitive processes. In connectionist, neural network, or parallel distributed processing models, information processing takes the form of cooperative and competitive interactions among many simple, neuron-like processing units. These models provide new ways of thinking about the neural basis of cognitive processes, and how disorders of brain function lead to disorders of cognition. This monograph is an expanded version of a recent issue of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology. It presents the most comprehensive existing "case study" of how the effects of damage in connectionist models can replicate the detailed and diverse patterns of cognitive impairments that can arise in humans as a result of brain damage. It begins with a review of the basic methodology of cognitive neuropsychology and of other attempts at modeling neuropsychological phenomena. It then focuses on a particular form of acquired reading disorder, "deep dyslexia," in which previously literate adults with brain damage exhibit a wide range of symptoms in pronouncing written words, the most striking of which is the production of semantic errors (e.g. reading RIVER as "ocean"). A series of simulations investigate the effects of damage in connectionist models that pronounce written words via their meaning. The work systematically explores each main aspect of the design of the models, identifying the basic computational properties that are responsible for the occurrence of deep dyslexia when the models are damaged. Although the investigation concerns a specific form of reading impairment, the computational principles that emerge as critical are very general ones: representation of concepts as distributed patterns of activity, encoding of knowledge in terms of weights on connections between units, interactivity between units to form stable attractors for familiar activity patterns, and greater richness of concrete vs. abstract semantics. The fact that damage to models embodying these principles and damage to the brain can produce strikingly similar behaviour supports the view that the human cognitive system operates according to similar principles.

Phil Johnson-Laird's theory of mental models has proved to be an influential development in the cognitive sciences. This theory aims to provide a detailed account of both reasoning and inference on the one hand, and language on the other. It can therefore be regarded as a step toward the much-sought-after unified theory of cognition.; This book provides an overview of mental models research. Some of the contributors were collaborators or former graduate students of Johnson-Laird, and between them they cover the main strands of mental models theory. After an appreciation of Johnson-Laird, the book covers topics including language Processing, Reasoning, Inference, The Role Of Emotions, And The Impact Of mental illnesses on thought processes.