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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology > Intelligence
Despite the enormous capacity of the human brain, we only utilise on average two per cent of our potential brainpower. There is therefore enormous potential for us to expand our brainpower considerably and regular testing is a key method of doing just that. Included in this book are literally hundreds of completely new tests designed to give your brain a complete workout. Numerous puzzles and tests cover the areas of creative thinking, memory, logical thought, mental agility and intelligence. Also included is a hints section, as well as the actual answers. Some of the questions are designed for you to test yourself against the clock. All questions are designed to increase your brainpower. Use this and other books in the IQ Workout Series as a fun and informative way of testing, assessing, and expanding your brainpower! These books are suitable for anyone from 18 to 80 who wants to put themselves to the test. Ken Russell and Philip Carter have written nearly 100 books on all aspects of testing, puzzles and crosswords.
Seymour W. Itzkoff is one of the world's leading intelligence researchers. His exciting new book Our Unfinished Biological Revolution offers a bold and highly original new study on the evolution of human intelligence from the origin of life to our times. With the help of evolutionary theory, Itzkoff explains the nature of human intelligence as we know it today. Most importantly, it demonstrates that evolution led to the rise of what intelligence researchers call the general intelligence factor: the human ability to plan ahead and solve problems for which natural selection did not prepare us. The book also argues that humans vary in intelligence (as with all traits shaped by Darwinian evolution), and hence in their propensity to think abstractly and anticipate long-term consequences of their actions. Our Unfinished Biological Revolution explores the social implications of these two factors as they unfold in modern technological societies, in which intelligence plays an increasingly important role. Finally, the book argues that human intelligence may offer our best hope in solving the daunting problems of the present era?including population growth, the exhaustion of natural resources, and the rise of simplistic and devastating ideologies.
This book is for anyone who wonders whether to trust the media, seeks creative solutions to problems, or grapples with ethical dilemmas. Cognitive scientist Denise D. Cummins clearly explains how experts in economics, philosophy, and science use seven powerful decision-making methods to tackle these challenges. These techniques include: logic, moral judgment, analogical reasoning, scientific reasoning, rational choice, game theory and creative problem solving. Updated and revised in a second edition, each chapter now features quizzes for course use or self-study.
Addressing the problems surrounding cyber security and cyberspace, this book bridges the gap between the technical and political worlds to increase our understanding of this major security concern in our IT-dependent society, and the risks it presents. Only by establishing a sound technical understanding of what is and is not possible can a properly informed discussion take place, and political visions toward cyberspace accurately map and predict the future of cyber security. Combining research from the technical world that creates cyberspace with that of the political world, which seeks to understand the consequences and uses of cyberspace, Steed analyses and explains the circumstances that have led to current situations whereby IT-dependent societies are vulnerable to, and regularly victims of, hacking, terrorism, espionage, and cyberwar. Two fundamental questions are considered throughout the book: what circumstances led to this state of affairs? And what solutions exist for the future of cyberspace? In tackling these questions, Steed also analyses the emergent and increasingly competing political positions on offer to stabilise the landscape of cyberspace. This interdisciplinary work will appeal to researchers and students of Security Studies, Intelligence Studies, Strategic Studies and International Relations as well as cybersecurity practitioners charged with developing policy options.
David E. Over is a leading cognitive scientist and, with his firm grounding in philosophical logic, he also exerts a powerful influence on the psychology of reasoning. He is responsible for not only a large body of empirical work and accompanying theory, but for advancing a major shift in thinking about reasoning, commonly known as the 'new paradigm' in the psychology of human reasoning. Over's signature mix of philosophical logic and experimental psychology has inspired generations of researchers, psychologists, and philosophers alike over more than a quarter of a century. The chapters in this volume, written by a leading group of contributors including a number who helped shape the psychology of reasoning as we know it today, each take their starting point from the key themes of Over's ground-breaking work. The essays in this collection explore a wide range of central topics-such as rationality, bias, dual processes, and dual systems-as well as contemporary psychological and philosophical theories of conditionals. It concludes with an engaging new chapter, authored by David E. Over himself, which details and analyses the new paradigm psychology of reasoning. This book is therefore important reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences, including those who are not familiar with Over's thought already.
Examining the thematic intersection of law, technology and violence, this book explores cyber attacks against states and current international law on the use of force. The theory of information ethics is used to critique the law's conception of violence and to develop an informational approach as an alternative way to think about cyber attacks. Cyber attacks against states constitute a new form of violence in the information age, and international law on the use of force is limited in its capacity to regulate them. This book draws on Luciano Floridi's theory of information ethics to critique the narrow conception of violence embodied in the law and to develop an alternative way to think about cyber attacks, violence, and the state. The author uses three case studies - the 2007 cyber attacks against Estonia, the Stuxnet incident involving Iran that was discovered in 2010, and the cyber attacks used as part of the Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election - to demonstrate that an informational approach offers a means to reimagine the state as an entity and cyber attacks as a form of violence against it. This interdisciplinary approach will appeal to an international audience of scholars in international law, international relations, security studies, cyber security, and anyone interested in the issues surrounding emerging technologies.
Some people are cleverer than others. This everyday observation is the subject of an academic field that is often portrayed as confused and controversial, when in fact, the field of intelligence holds some of psychology's best-replicated findings. This Very Short Introduction describes what psychologists have discovered about how and why people differ in their thinking powers. Drawing on large scale data Ian Deary considers how many types of intelligence there are, and how intelligence changes with age. Along the way he tackles some of the most burning questions surrounding intelligence, such as whether larger brains are cleverer, and how genes and environments contribute to people's intelligence differences. He also considers the new field of cognitive epidemiology, which draws links between intelligence and better health, less illness, and longer life, and asks whether intelligence is increasing. In this new edition Deary also addresses the controversial question of whether men and women differ in intelligence. Throughout he provides a clear description of the data we can use to answer these questions and more. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Practice prepare and get ready to pass. Don't let a psychometric test stop you getting the job you want. Packed with practice questions and practical Passing Psychometric Tests will help you lose the fear, prepare and practice with everything you need to know to pass with flying colours.
Exercise your imagination and set off sparks of genius. Explore the "thinking tools" of extraordinary people, from Albert Einstein and Jane Goodall to Amadeus Mozart and Virginia Woolf, and learn how you can practice the same imaginative skills to become your creative best. With engaging narratives and ample illustrations, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein investigate cognitive tools as diverse as observing, imaging, recognizing patterns, modeling, playing, and more. SPARKS OF GENIUS is "a clever, detailed and demanding fitness program for the creative mind" (Kirkus Reviews) and a groundbreaking guidebook for anyone interested in imaginative thinking, lifelong learning, and transdisciplinary education.
This book is the first history of UK economic intelligence and offers a new perspective on the evolution of Britain's national intelligence machinery and how it worked during the Cold War. British economic intelligence has a longer pedigree than the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and was the vanguard of intelligence coordination in Whitehall, yet it remains a missing field in intelligence studies. This book is the first history of this core government capability and shows how central it was to the post-war evolution of Whitehall's national intelligence machinery. It places special emphasis on the Joint Intelligence Bureau and Defence Intelligence Staff - two vital organisations in the Ministry of Defence underpinning the whole Whitehall intelligence edifice, but almost totally ignored by historians. Intelligence in Whitehall was not conducted in a parallel universe. This contrasts with the conventional wisdom which accepts the uniqueness of intelligence as a government activity and is symbolised by the historical profile of the JIC. The study draws on the official archives to show that the mantra of the existence of a semi-autonomous UK intelligence community cannot be sustained against the historical evidence of government departments using the machinery of government to advance their traditional priorities. Rivalries within and between agencies and departments, and their determination to resist any central encroachment on their authority, emasculated a truly professional multi-skilled capability in Whitehall at the very moment when it was needed to address emerging global economic issues. This book will be of much interest to students of British government and politics, intelligence studies, defence studies, security studies and international relations in general.
This accessible book provides a foundational understanding of the science of deception and lie detection. Focusing on core issues for the field, it discusses classic and current psychological research into lying as well as theoretical approaches to understanding human lie detection. The book explores engaging questions around how people lie, how people make decisions about believing others, and how we can detect deception. Each chapter is clearly structured to support students of all levels by summarising content, presenting key research and systematically evaluating findings. Chapters explore topics including some of the most promising current lie detection techniques, how and why people lie, how lying develops in children, and whether unconscious thinking can boost lie detection accuracy. Providing an overview of key issues in deception, this book will be of great interest to students and lecturers in the field of deception and lie detection, as well as anyone generally interested in this fascinating field of research.
What is language and what is the nature of the intelligence that can acquire it? This volume, originally published in 1976, describes 10 years of research devoted to these questions. The author describes his programmatic research of decomposing language into atomic constituents, designing and applying training programs for teaching these to chimpanzees, and for teaching chimps major human ontological categories, as well as for interrogative, declarative, and imperative sentence forms. The volume details the progress from teaching apes simple predicates such as same-different, to more complex predicates such as if-then, and the success of the program led to the following questions directly related to intelligence: What made the training program effective? What is the cognitive equipment of the species which enables it to learn language? What does this tell us about human intelligence? The answers were suggested in terms of conceptual structure, representational capacity, memory and the ability to handle second-order relations. The results of this experimentation, which resulted in synonymy in some animals, shed light not only on the nature of language, but the nature of intelligence as well. One of the earliest ape language and intelligence studies, today this classic can be read and enjoyed again in its historical context.
Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently administer, score, and interpret nonverbal assessment tests Essentials of Nonverbal Assessment covers the nine most widely used nonverbal assessment tests––the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (C-TONI); Tests of Nonverbal Intelligence-III (TONI-III); Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT); Leiter-R; Beta, Third Edition (Beta-III); Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT); General Ability Measure for Adults (GAMA); Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, Multilevel Form (NNAT); and Raven’s Progress Matrices. To use the tests properly, professionals need an authoritative source of advice and guidance on how to administer, score, and interpret these tests. Written by Drs. McCallum and Bracken (creators of the UNIT) and Dr. Wasserman of the University of Tennessee, Essentials of Nonverbal Assessment is that source. Like all the volumes in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, this book is designed to help busy mental health professionals quickly acquire the knowledge and skills they need to make optimal use of major psychological assessment instruments. Each concise chapter features numerous callout boxes highlighting key concepts, bulleted points, and extensive illustrative material, as well as test questions that help you gauge and reinforce your grasp of the information covered. Essentials of Nonverbal Assessment includes vital information about each of the nonverbal tests, including practical interpretation scales. The authors provide step-by-step guidance on test administration, scoring, and interpretation, along with their expert assessment of the tests’ relative strengths and weaknesses, valuable advice on their clinical applications, and several illuminating case reports. Other titles in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series: Essentials of WAIS-III Assessmen Essentials of Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II Assessment Essentials of WISC-III and WPPSI-R Assessment Essentials of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Assessment Essentials of Rorschach Assessment Essentials of Career Interest Assessment Essentials of Cognitive Assessment with KAIT and Other Kaufman Measures Essentials of Cross-Battery Assessment
Can problems be solved by setting them aside or by sleeping on them? Incubation, the process of stopping conscious work on problems for a set period of time, is an integral part of the creative problem solving process. Providing an overview of the main issues, findings and implications of cognitive research on incubation effects in problem solving and creativity, this book argues that incubation is an effective strategy for tackling problems that do not yield to initial solution attempts. Gilhooly reasons that unconscious work is automatic and explores the underlying processes involved in incubation, providing evidence to showcase the major role of unconscious processing in problem solving. Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity concludes with a discussion of the implications of unconscious work theory for enhanced problem solving, positioning incubation as an effective and important stage in creative problem solving. This book is an invaluable resource for students and researchers of problem solving, creativity and thinking and reasoning as well as for students from all disciplines taking problem solving modules.
Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently
administer, score, and interpret various brief intelligence tests
As part of the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series,
this volume provides information mental health professionals need
to practice knowledgably, efficiently, and ethically in today's
behavioral healthcare environment. Each concise chapter features
numerous callout boxes highlighting key concepts, bulleted points,
and extensive illustrative material, as well as "Test Yourself"
questions that help you gauge and reinforce your grasp of the
information covered.
This book provides a frequentist semantics for conditionalization on partially known events, which is given as a straightforward generalization of classical conditional probability via so-called probability testbeds. It analyzes the resulting partial conditionalization, called frequentist partial (F.P.) conditionalization, from different angles, i.e., with respect to partitions, segmentation, independence, and chaining. It turns out that F.P. conditionalization meets and generalizes Jeffrey conditionalization, i.e., from partitions to arbitrary collections of events, opening it for reassessment and a range of potential applications. A counterpart of Jeffrey's rule for the case of independence holds in our frequentist semantics. This result is compared to Jeffrey's commutative chaining of independent updates. The postulate of Jeffrey's probability kinematics, which is rooted in the subjectivism of Frank P. Ramsey, is found to be a consequence in our frequentist semantics. This way the book creates a link between the Kolmogorov system of probability and one of the important Bayesian frameworks. Furthermore, it shows a preservation result for conditional probabilities under the full update range and compares F.P. semantics with an operational semantics of classical conditional probability in terms of so-called conditional events. Lastly, it looks at the subjectivist notion of desirabilities and proposes a more fine-grained analysis of desirabilities a posteriori. This book appeals to researchers who are involved in any kind of knowledge processing systems. F.P. conditionalization is a straightforward, fundamental concept that fits human intuition, and is systematically linked to one of the important Bayesian frameworks. As such, the book is interesting for anybody investigating the semantics of reasoning systems.
Thinking, Reasoning, and Decision Making in Autism provides fresh insights into the cognitive processes that underlie some of the typical characteristics of autism. Autism has long been considered an enigma, and no single theory so far has been able to explain, or even fully describe, the key characteristics of the autistic mind. From the interdisciplinary perspective of new research in cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience, this book explores thinking, reasoning, and decision making in autism. The new cognitive approaches challenge some of the existing assumptions of the nature of thought in autism, including presumed areas of impairments. Instead, this book focuses on the nuanced array of cognitive signatures that characterize the autistic mind, and in many cases it reveals the possibility of intact performance alongside instances of remarkably enhanced thinking. The book considers the implications of these characteristics, providing in-depth analyses of specific areas of cognitive functioning, and their everyday manifestations. Featuring contributions from world-leading researchers from the fields of cognitive science and autism research, this volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers, as well as those working with individuals with autism spectrum disorders.
An aptitude test is designed to measure the potential for achievement in an individual, whilst an IQ test is a standardized test designed to measure intelligence. Both are now increasingly encountered in recruitment, selection and assessment procedures. IQ and Aptitude Tests contains over 350 practice questions together with answers, explanations and a guide to assessing performance. The questions are organized into four IQ tests together with verbal, spatial and numerical aptitude tests. These include tests of word meanings, grammar and comprehension, advanced verbal aptitude, logical analysis, mental arithmetic, numerical sequences, and number problems. Invaluable to those who are faced with an aptitude or IQ test, this book will also help anyone who needs to improve their verbal, numerical and reasoning skills.
As critics will note, psychometric tests are deeply flawed. Person-to-person differences in performance on a psychometric test are not informative about many things of great interest. An intelligence quotient (IQ) cannot characterize creativity or w- dom or artistic ability or other forms of specialized knowledge. An IQ test is simply an effort to assess an aptitude for success in the modern world, and individual scores do a mediocre job of predicting individual successes. In the early days of psychology, tests of intelligence were cobbled together with little thought as to validity; instead, the socially powerful sought to validate their power and the prominent to rationalize their success. In recent years, we have ob- ated many of the objections to IQ that were so forcefully noted by Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man. Nevertheless, IQ tests are still flawed and those flaws are hereby acknowledged in principle. Yet, in the analysis that follows, individual IQ test scores are not used; rather, average IQ scores are employed. In many cases - though not all - an average IQ is calculated from a truly enormous sample of people. The most common circ- stance for such large-scale IQ testing is an effort to systematically sample all men of a certain age, to assess their suitability for service in the military. Yet, it is useful and prudent to retain some degree of skepticism about the ability of IQ tests to measure individual aptitudes.
A smart way to teach children to think logically and creatively One of the most precious gifts you can offer a child is a sharp mind. The 56 puzzles in this delightful collection were passed down through generations of Chinese families who wanted their children to develop concentration and mental agility. Baifang spent hours enjoying them with her family and friends as she was growing up in the north of China. Now living in San Francisco, Baifang is passing them on to her own children and to families everywhere. Each puzzle inspires clear, precise, and inventive thinking. Some teach math concepts; others involve spatial relationships and visualization. All of them have fascinating solutions and help improve memory and problem-solving skills. An inexhaustible source of challenging fun, these are mental calisthenics for stimulating interaction between lively minds from ages 8 to 80.
Thinking, Reasoning, and Decision Making in Autism provides fresh insights into the cognitive processes that underlie some of the typical characteristics of autism. Autism has long been considered an enigma, and no single theory so far has been able to explain, or even fully describe, the key characteristics of the autistic mind. From the interdisciplinary perspective of new research in cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience, this book explores thinking, reasoning, and decision making in autism. The new cognitive approaches challenge some of the existing assumptions of the nature of thought in autism, including presumed areas of impairments. Instead, this book focuses on the nuanced array of cognitive signatures that characterize the autistic mind, and in many cases it reveals the possibility of intact performance alongside instances of remarkably enhanced thinking. The book considers the implications of these characteristics, providing in-depth analyses of specific areas of cognitive functioning, and their everyday manifestations. Featuring contributions from world-leading researchers from the fields of cognitive science and autism research, this volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers, as well as those working with individuals with autism spectrum disorders.
Conditional reasoning is reasoning that involves statements of the sort If A (Antecedent) then C (Consequent). This type of reasoning is ubiquitous; everyone engages in it. Indeed, the ability to do so may be considered a defining human characteristic. Without this ability, human cognition would be greatly impoverished. "What-if" thinking could not occur. There would be no retrospective efforts to understand history by imagining how it could have taken a different course. Decisions that take possible contingencies into account could not be made; there could be no attempts to influence the future by selecting actions on the basis of their expected effects. Despite the commonness and importance of conditional reasoning and the considerable attention it has received from scholars, it remains the subject of much continuing debate. Unsettled questions, both normative and empirical, continue to be asked. What constitutes normative conditional reasoning? How do people engage in it? Does what people do match what would be expected of a rational agent with the abilities and limitations of human beings? If not, how does it deviate and how might people's ability to engage in it be improved? This book reviews the work of prominent psychologists and philosophers on conditional reasoning. It describes empirical research on how people deal with conditional arguments and on how conditional statements are used and interpreted in everyday communication. It examines philosophical and theoretical treatments of the mental processes that support conditional reasoning. Its extensive coverage of the subject makes it an ideal resource for students, teachers, and researchers with a focus on cognition across disciplines.
The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve. When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. Yet the idea of biology as destiny dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined. In this edition, Stephen Jay Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes." "A rare book-at once of great importance and wonderful to read."—Saturday Review
Jonathan L. Kvanvig presents a conception of rationality which answers to the need arising out of the egocentric predicament concerning what to do and what to believe. He does so in a way that avoids, on the one hand, reducing rationality to the level of beasts, and on the other hand, elevating it so that only the most reflective among us are capable of rational beliefs. Rationality and Reflection sets out a theory of rationality-a theory about how to determine what to think-which defends a significant degree of optionality in the story of what is reasonable for people to think, and thereby provides a framework for explaining what kinds of rational disagreement are possible. The theory is labelled Perspectivalism and it offers a unique account of rationality, one that cuts across the usual distinctions between Foundationalism and Coherentism and between Internalism and Externalism. It also differs significantly from Evidentialism, maintaining that, to the extent that rationality is connected to the notion of evidence, it is a function both of the evidence one has and what one makes of it.
John Gibbons presents an original account of epistemic normativity. Belief seems to come with a built-in set of standards or norms. One task is to say where these standards come from. But the more basic task is to say what those standards are. In some sense, beliefs are supposed to be true. Perhaps they're supposed to constitute knowledge. And in some sense, they really ought to be reasonable. Which, if any of these is the fundamental norm of belief? The Norm of Belief argues against the teleological or instrumentalist conception of rationality that sees being reasonable as a means to our more objective aims, either knowledge or truth. And it tries to explain both the norms of knowledge and of truth in terms of the fundamental norm, the one that tells you to be reasonable. But the importance of being reasonable is not explained in terms of what it will get you, or what you think it will get you, or what it would get you if only things were different. The requirement to be reasonable comes from the very idea of what a genuine requirement is. That is where the built-in standards governing belief come from, and that is what they are. |
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