Bringing together neurological assessments of reading and cognition, this provocative volume, originally published in 1985, presents eight major and sometimes controversial studies on the parts and patterns of the reading process. With comprehensive coverage ranging from psycholinguistics and education to neurophysiology, these studies highlight new directions in the field at the time. The contributors support an interactive rather than dichotomous model of brain function, and stress individual differences in assessing reading and cognitive skills.

Originally published in 1987, this book introduces work on the intellectual development of children in the primary school. It contains chapters on the teaching of reading, writing, art, science and mathematics. While critical of many of the once popular ideas of Jean Piaget, the author also emphasises the continuing validity of some aspects of Piaget's thinking.

How does learning transform us biologically? What learning processes do we share with bacteria, jellyfish and monkeys? Is technology impacting on our evolution and what might the future hold for the learning brain? These are just some of the questions Paul Howard-Jones explores on a fascinating journey through 3.5 billion years of brain evolution, and discovers what it all means for how we learn today. Along the way, we discover how the E. coli in our stomachs learn to find food why a little nap can help bees find their way home the many ways that action, emotion and social interaction have shaped our ability to learn the central role of learning in our rise to top predator. An accessible writing style and numerous illustrations make Evolution of the Learning Brain an enthralling combination of biology, neuroscience and educational insight. Howard-Jones provides a fresh perspective on the nature of human learning that is exhaustively researched, exploring the implications of our most distant past for twenty-first-century education.

Originally published in 1974, this introductory text has been designed specifically for teachers in training, and it presents the basic psychological principles governing learning, perception, motivation and the retention of knowledge at the time. The text is carefully tailored for would-be teachers in its clear and informal style, and in its selective aspects of psychology which the teacher can use to advantage in his efforts to assist the child. The book has an eclectic approach to psychological theory, drawing upon the insights of behaviourism, perceptualism and the Gestalt school, as well as the developmental theories of Jean Piaget. The author discusses in some detail theories concerning the nature of intelligence, and the relationship between creativity and intelligence; and he investigates the dynamics of social adjustment, introducing the part that may be played by meditation in helping to solve some of the problems of emotional stress within the learning situation. In his consideration of the management of learning, the author lays much emphasis upon the importance of individual cognitive styles, individualizing instruction and independent learning. In one chapter Dr Mueller is concerned with factors in the measurement of personality and of performance in the classroom, and he reflects upon the specific problem of objectivity in such assessment. Finally, some consideration is given to the problems and characteristics of the socially disadvantaged child and to the role of the teacher in helping to solve some of the learning problems of these children.

Unleash powerful teaching and the science of learning in your classroom Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning empowers educators to harness rigorous research on how students learn and unleash it in their classrooms. In this book, cognitive scientist Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D., and veteran K-12 teacher Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S., decipher cognitive science research and illustrate ways to successfully apply the science of learning in classrooms settings. This practical resource is filled with evidence-based strategies that are easily implemented in less than a minute--without additional prepping, grading, or funding! Research demonstrates that these powerful strategies raise student achievement by a letter grade or more; boost learning for diverse students, grade levels, and subject areas; and enhance students' higher order learning and transfer of knowledge beyond the classroom. Drawing on a fifteen-year scientist-teacher collaboration, more than 100 years of research on learning, and rich experiences from educators in K-12 and higher education, the authors present highly accessible step-by-step guidance on how to transform teaching with four essential strategies: Retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition. With Powerful Teaching, you will: Develop a deep understanding of powerful teaching strategies based on the science of learning Gain insight from real-world examples of how evidence-based strategies are being implemented in a variety of academic settings Think critically about your current teaching practices from a research-based perspective Develop tools to share the science of learning with students and parents, ensuring success inside and outside the classroom Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning is an indispensable resource for educators who want to take their instruction to the next level. Equipped with scientific knowledge and evidence-based tools, turn your teaching into powerful teaching and unleash student learning in your classroom.

Originally published in 1987, Being Skilled presents a new model of how children learn to read, and in particular those who learn quickly and precociously. Bringing together ideas from such diverse sources as cognitive and developmental psychology and behaviour analysis perspectives on learning, Stuart McNaughton has produced a more complete theory based on a study of homes and classrooms, and the characteristics of reading behaviour in these settings. Within this theory reading is seen as a symbolic skill with structural properties that partly determine development; but it is also a social practice, in which learning is achieved through problem-solving and the performing of tasks set by particular environments. Drawing on extensive research carried out in Britain, North America and Australasia, McNaughton examines how interactions between teacher and child direct the task of learning to read, and how the relationship between home and school can be a well-matched or a poorly-matched setting in which learning may occur. Being Skilled will appeal to advanced students, researchers and theorists in education and development psychology and to anyone interested in the learning of complex skills.

Slow Looking provides a robust argument for the importance of slow looking in learning environments both general and specialized, formal and informal, and its connection to major concepts in teaching, learning, and knowledge. A museum-originated practice increasingly seen as holding wide educational benefits, slow looking contends that patient, immersive attention to content can produce active cognitive opportunities for meaning-making and critical thinking that may not be possible though high-speed means of information delivery. Addressing the multi-disciplinary applications of this purposeful behavioral practice, this book draws examples from the visual arts, literature, science, and everyday life, using original, real-world scenarios to illustrate the complexities and rewards of slow looking.

Research on training programs for students with learning difficulties has usually focused on the development of social and behavioural skills and the acquisition of cognitive interventions and procedures. Originally published in 1989, this book attempts to apply the methods validated by research and synthesize the discoveries made in the psychological laboratory for the benefit of teachers in regular classrooms. It reviews the literature relevant to special needs teaching and traces the development of cognitive research as it applies to education. The authors propose a specific and practical teaching strategy which has been successfully used by those working with students with special needs. Starting from the basic belief that education is an interactive process between the participants, the authors have emphasised the role and responsibility both of the teacher and the learner. Their book should be of value to researchers and practitioners in psychology and special education.

What can research in cognitive psychology offer the growth of educational technology and instructional media? Originally published in 1988, this book argues that, for much of its history, educational technology has been concerned with justifying and verifying the basic assumption that the processes and products of technology can improve instructional effectiveness. The result is seen as a systems approach grounded in empiricism and the failure to incorporate much important research in cognitive psychology. The book argues that it is now time for educational technology to come to terms with new ideas in cognitive, and particularly constructivist, psychology and it both advocates and describes the forging of new links between the two disciplines.

Every day people come together to make music. Whether amateur or professional, young or old, jazz enthusiasts or rock stars, what is common to all of these musical groups is the potential to create communities of musical practice (CoMP). Such communities are created through practices: ways of engaging, rules, membership, roles, identities and learning that is both shared through collective musical endeavour and situated within certain sociocultural contexts. Ailbhe Kenny investigates CoMP as a rich model for community engagement, musical participation and transformation in music education. This book is the first to produce a valid and reliable in-depth study of music communities using a community of practice (CoP) framework - in this case focusing on the social process of musical learning. Employing case study research within Ireland, three illustrations from particular sociocultural, genre-specific, economic and geographical contexts are examined: an adult amateur jazz ensemble, a youth choir, and an online Irish traditional music web platform. Each case is analysed as a distinct community and phenomenon offering sharpened understandings of each sub-culture with specific findings presented for each community.

Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 67 features empirical and theoretical contributions in cognitive and experimental psychology, ranging from classical and instrumental conditioning, to complex learning and problem-solving. New to this volume are chapters on a variety of topics, including Domain-general and domain-specific contributions to working memory, Believing is Seeing: The Role of Physics Expertise in Perception, Preferences in Reasoning, Post retrieval processing: How knowledge is updated after retrieval, Morpho-orthographic segmentation and reading: the role of embedded words, and "Is prospective memory unique? A comparison of prospective and retrospective memory." Each chapter in this series thoughtfully integrates the writings of leading contributors, who both present and discuss significant bodies of research relevant to their discipline.

In the age of digital music it seems striking that so many of us still want to produce music concretely with our bodies, through the movement of our limbs, lungs and fingers, in contact with those materials and objects which are capable of producing sounds. The huge sales figures of musical instruments in the global market, and the amount of time and effort people of all ages invest in mastering the tools of music, make it clear that playing musical instruments is an important phenomenon in human life. By combining the findings made in music psychology and performative ethnomusicology, Marko Aho shows how playing a musical instrument, and the pleasure musicians get from it, emerges from an intimate dialogue between the personally felt body and the sounding instrument. An introduction to the general aspects of the tactile resources of musical instruments, musical style and the musician is followed by an analysis of the learning process of the regional kantele style of the Perho river valley in Finnish Central Ostrobothnia.

Summarizing a half century of work on the problem of identifying units of analysis for complex human behaviour, this book introduces modes of practice as a unit of analysis for the science and design of human activities, and shows how to record them and create field guides at scales from individual to society. Revealing scientific analysis of human practices has been hampered by the lack of a unit of analysis, Dirlam describes how the difficulties of defining a unit are overcome by combining insights from mathematics and human development. Part II presents methods for developmental surveys and interviews that enable social scientists, designers, and education or training assessment professionals to gather data on modes of practice. Part III provides practical descriptions of how to organize interviews into developmental surveys that can be used by a community. Part IV inspires future advances in research and design. Concrete examples from science, design, and learning assessment are used throughout, and the appendix includes the results of 300 developmental interviews, organized into exploratory descriptions of modes of practice and commitment.

Selection tests are now common in interviews and this book covers everything you need to know from knowing what the tests are used for to how to do well in them. This book explains why employers put you through these hoops, and why you shouldn't worry about them. It offers ways for you to prepare for, survive and improve your selection test results, assess your own ability and learn how test results are weighted against other selection methods. This book will include comments from employers who use the tests, psychologists who design them, and applicants who have faced them. This book provides reassurance and plenty of genuine work-through examples. It covers everything right down to test anxiety, test simulations and misuse of tests.

Brain-Based Learning and Education presents a new type of education that uses brain-based and self-control theory-driven training. Leaving aside the current focus in education on content knowledge, it examines essential character strengths such as selfcontrol, persistence, creativity, attention, memory, and social learning, and relates their relevance to learning. By bridging the research and application gap in education, this text not only covers the latest findings related to learning and teaching but also provides insights for application and practice for brain-based methods in health and education. This integration of neuroscience and education takes us from a deep understanding of brain function to the frontline of the classroom.

"A practical primer par excellence for teachers who want to implement the principles of Reuven Feuerstein's Mediated Learning Experience. A multitude of easy-to-implement suggestions empowers teachers to transform even the most challenged students into more effective thinkers and learners." -James Bellanca, Chief Executive Officer International Renewal Institute, Inc. "Teachers are often told to improve students' problem-solving abilities. This is a book that explains HOW, teaching the practitioner to recognize dysfunctions in cognition and providing strategies to help students become independent learners." -Lauren Mittermann, Social Studies Teacher Gibraltar Middle School, Fish Creek, WI Develop your students' abilities to think and learn more effectively! All individuals have the potential to change and learn. Using Reuven Feuerstein's theory that educators can enhance intelligence and change the way students think with the right kind of intervention, the authors provide teachers and counselors with practical strategies to help at-risk students develop cognitive skills and become more effective thinkers and learners. In the second edition, readers will find an expanded discussion of mediated learning, explanations and applications of the Cognitive Map and Structured Cognitive Modifiability, and reflective activities for the educator. Through case studies and in-depth coverage of metacognition, metalearning, metateaching, and metatasking, this user-friendly resource shows educators how they can: Analyze learners' cognitive skills Modify tasks to advance learning Promote the use of effective thinking skills Encourage autonomous learning Mediated Learning, Second Edition, offers highly effective intervention techniques to increase student motivation, improve students' problem-solving skills, and strengthen their thinking processes.

Skill Acquisition and Training describes the building blocks of cognitive, motor, and teamwork skills, and the factors to take into account in training them. The basic processes of perception, cognition and action that provide the foundation for understanding skilled performance are discussed in the context of complex task requirements, individual differences, and extreme environmental demands. The role of attention in perceiving, selecting, and becoming aware of information, in learning new information, and in performance is described in the context of specific skills. A theme throughout this book is that much learning is implicit; the types of knowledge and relations that can profitably be learned implicitly and the conditions under which this learning benefits performance are discussed. The question of whether skill acquisition in cognitive domains shares underlying mechanisms with the acquisition of perceptual and motor skills is also addressed with a view to identifying commonalities that allow for widely applicable, general theories of skill acquisition. Because the complexity of real-world environments puts demands on the individual to adapt to new circumstances, the question of how skills research can be applied to organizational training contexts is an important one. To address this, this book dedicates much content to practical applications, covering such issues as how training needs can be captured with task and job analyses and how to maximize training transfer by taking trainee self-efficacy and goal orientation into account. This comprehensive yet readable textbook is optimized for students of cognitive psychology looking to understand the intricacies of skill acquisition.

How do we develop musical creativity? How is musical creativity nurtured in collaborative improvisation? How is it used as a communicative tool in music therapy? This comprehensive volume offers new research on these questions by an international team of experts from the fields of music education, music psychology and music therapy. The book celebrates the rich diversity of ways in which learners of all ages develop and use musical creativity. Contributions focus broadly on the composition/improvisation process, considering its conceptualization and practices in a number of contexts. The authors examine how musical creativity can be fostered in formal settings, drawing examples from primary and secondary schools, studio, conservatoire and university settings, as well as specialist music schools and music therapy sessions. These essays will inspire readers to think deeply about musical creativity and its development. The book will be of crucial interest to music educators, policy makers, researchers and students, as it draws on applied research from across the globe, promoting coherent and symbiotic links between education, music and psychology research.

To reach the highest standards of instrumental performance, several years of sustained and focused learning are required. This requires perseverance, commitment and opportunities to learn and practise, often in a collective musical environment. This book brings together a wide range of enlightening current psychological and educational research to offer deeper insights into the mosaic of factors and related experiences that combine to nurture (and sometimes hinder) advanced musical performance. Each of the book's four sections focus on one aspect of music performance and learning: musics in higher education and beyond; musical journeys and educational reflections; performance learning; and developing expertise and professionalism. Although each chapter within its home section offers a particular focus, there is an underlying conception across all the book's contents of the achievability of advanced musical performance and of the important nurturing role that higher education can play, particularly if policy and practice are evidence-based and draw on the latest international research findings. The narrative offers an insight into the world of advanced musicians, detailing their learning journeys and the processes involved in their quest for the development of expertise and professionalism. It is the first book of its kind to consider performance learning in higher education across a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, popular and folk musics. The editors have invited an international community of leading scholars and performance practitioners to contribute to this publication, which draws on meticulous research and critical practice. This collection is an essential resource for all musicians, educators, researchers and policy makers who share our interest in promoting the development of advanced performance skills and professionalism.

Skill Acquisition and Training describes the building blocks of cognitive, motor, and teamwork skills, and the factors to take into account in training them. The basic processes of perception, cognition and action that provide the foundation for understanding skilled performance are discussed in the context of complex task requirements, individual differences, and extreme environmental demands. The role of attention in perceiving, selecting, and becoming aware of information, in learning new information, and in performance is described in the context of specific skills. A theme throughout this book is that much learning is implicit; the types of knowledge and relations that can profitably be learned implicitly and the conditions under which this learning benefits performance are discussed. The question of whether skill acquisition in cognitive domains shares underlying mechanisms with the acquisition of perceptual and motor skills is also addressed with a view to identifying commonalities that allow for widely applicable, general theories of skill acquisition. Because the complexity of real-world environments puts demands on the individual to adapt to new circumstances, the question of how skills research can be applied to organizational training contexts is an important one. To address this, this book dedicates much content to practical applications, covering such issues as how training needs can be captured with task and job analyses and how to maximize training transfer by taking trainee self-efficacy and goal orientation into account. This comprehensive yet readable textbook is optimized for students of cognitive psychology looking to understand the intricacies of skill acquisition.

This book brings together in one volume information about the neurobiological, genetic, and behavioral bases of reading and reading disabilities. In recent years, research on assessment and treatment of reading disability (dyslexia) has become a magnet for the application of new techniques and technologies from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. This interdisciplinary fusion has yielded numerous and diverse findings regarding the brain basis of this syndrome, which are discussed in this volume by leading researchers. Intervention approaches based on such research are presented. The book also calls for research in specific directions, to encourage the field to continue moving into the bold frontier of how the brain reads. The volume is essential reading for a range of researchers, clinicians, and other professionals interested in reading and reading disability, and also commemorates the tenth anniversary of the Extraordinary Brain Conferences hosted by The Dyslexia Foundation.

First published in English in 1970, the first chapter of the book is concerned with conditioned reactions. Jean Francois le Ny discusses ways in which conditioned reactions are acquired and the laws governing their function. The second contributor, Gerard de Montpellier, looks at different types of learning. The varying processes involved in both animal and human learning are considered, together with some general factors and mechanisms of learning. The third section of the book by Genevieve Oleron deals with the phenomenon of transfer. Among the topics included are the determination of transfer effects, transfer in perceptual-motor activities and explanations of transfer. In the final chapter, Cesar Flores examines memory, forgetting and reminiscence. The discussion covers methodology, the influence of material, the role of practice, the part played by attitudes, motivation and emotive reactions in the memory process, as well as the importance of organisation of memory tasks on the part of the subject.

While the notion of generalization fits prominently into cognitive theories of learning, there is surprisingly little research literature that takes an overview of the issue from a broad multifaceted perspective. This volume remedies this by taking a multidisciplinary perspective on generalization of knowledge from several fields associated with Cognitive Science, including Cognitive Neuroscience, Computer Science, Education, Linguistics, Developmental Science, and Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. Researchers from each perspective explain how their field defines generalization - and what practices, representations, processes, and systems in their field support generalization. They also examine when generalization is detrimental or not needed. A principal aim is the identification of general principles about generalization that can be derived from triangulation across different disciplines and approaches. Collectively, the contributors' multidisciplinary approaches to generalization provide new insights into this concept that will, in turn, inform future research into theory and application, including tutoring, assistive technology, and endeavors involving collaboration and distributed cognition.

Originally published in 1979, this volume contains chapters prepared following a conference at SUNY- Binghamton in 1977. The conference was the outcome of exciting new developments that had occurred in the ontogeny of learning and memory at the time, as well as a long-standing friendship between the editors. Many changes had taken place in the years leading up to this volume and there were now many more researchers active in the field. This volume reflected the rapidly changing state of this research area at the time and includes early contributions from researchers now well established in the field.