Colour fascinates all of us, and scientists and philosophers have sought to understand the true nature of colour vision for many years. In recent times, investigations into colour vision have been one of the success stories of cognitive science, for each discipline within the field - neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, computer science and artificial intelligence, and philosophy - has contributed significantly to our understanding of colour. Evan Thompson's book is a major contribution to this interdisciplinary project. This volume provides an accessible review of the current scientific and philosophical discussions of colour vision. Thompson steers a course between the subjective and objective positions on colour, arguing for a relational account. This account develops an "ecological" approach to colour vision in cognitive science and the philosophy of perception.

This monograph from a leading neuroscientist and neural networks researcher investigates and offers a fresh approach to the perplexing scientific and philosophical problems of minds and brains. It explains how brains have evolved from our earliest vertebrate ancestors. It details how brains provide the basis for successful comprehension of the environment, for the formulation of actions and prediction of their consequences, and for cooperating or competing with other beings that have brains. The book also offers observations regarding such issues as:
* how and why people fall in and out of love;
* the biological basis for experiencing feelings of love and hate; and
* how music and dance have provided the ancestral technology for forming social groups such as tribes and clans.
The author reviews the history of the mind-brain problem, and demonstrates how the new sciences of behavioral electrophysiology and nonlinear dynamics -- combined with the latest computer technology -- have made it possible for us to observe brains in action. He also provides an answer to the question: What happens to a stimulus after it enters the brain? The answer: The stimulus triggers the construction of a percept and is then washed away. All that we know is what our brains construct for us by neurodynamics. Brains are not logical devices that process information. They are dynamical systems that create meaning through interactions with the environment -- and each other.
The book shows how the learning process by which brains construct meaning tends to isolate brains into self-centered worlds, and how nature has provided a remedy -- first appearing in mammals as a mechanism for pair-bonding -- to ensure reproduction of the young dependent on parents. The remedy is based in the neurochemistry of sex which serves to dissolve belief structures in order to open the way for new patterns of understanding and behavior. Individuals experience these changes in various ways, such as falling in love, collegiate indoctrination, tribal bonding, brain washing, political or religious conversions, and related types of socialization. The highest forms of meaning for humans come through these social attachments.

In the World Library of Psychologists series, international experts themselves present career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, and their major practical theoretical contributions. Glyn Humphreys is an internationally renowned cognitive neuropsychologist with research interests covering object recognition and its disorders, visual word recognition, object and spatial attention, the effects of action on cognition, and social cognition. Within the field of Psychology he has won a number of prestigious awards, including the Spearman Medal, the President's Award of the British Psychological Society, and the Donald Broadbent Prize from the European Society for Cognitive Psychology. This collection reflects the different directions in his work and approaches which have been adopted. It will enable the reader to trace key developments in cognitive neuropsychology in a period of rapid change over the last thirty years. A newly written introduction contextualises the selection in relation to changes in the field during this time. Attention, Perception and Action will be invaluable reading for students and researchers in visual cognition, cognitive neuropsychology and vision neuroscience.

Colour fascinates all of us, and scientists and philosophers have sought to understand the true nature of colour vision for many years. In recent times, investigations into colour vision have been one of the main success stories of cognitive science, for each discipline within the field - neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, computer science and artificial intelligence, and philosophy - has contributed significantly to our understanding of colour. Evan Thompson's book is a major contribution to this interdisciplinary project. Colour Vision provides an accessible review of the current scientific and philosophical discussions of colour vision. Thompson steers a course between the subjective and objective positions on colour, arguing for a relational account. This account develops a novel `ecological' approach to colour vision in cognitive science and the philosophy of perception. It is vital reading for all cognitive scientists and philosophers whose interests touch upon this central area.

A child with developmental dyslexia or an adult with a reading disorder following brain damage might read the word shoe as 'show', why does this happen? Most current information processing models of reading distinguish between two alternative procedures for the pronunciation of a printed word. The difference between these concerns the level at which orthography is translated to phonology in one, the word-level procedure, a word is read aloud with reference to knowledge specific to that whole word. In the other, the sub-word-level procedure, a printed word is pronounced with reference to knowledge about smaller segments which occur in many different words. Both procedures contribute to normal skilled reading and its acquisition. But if one of the procedures is disrupted, then oral reading will be forced to rely on the alternative routine. Surface dyslexia is a general label for any disorder of reading which results from inadequate functioning of the word-level procedure and in consequence abnormal reliance on sub-word level translation from orthography to phonology. Originally published in 1985, this book provides new evidence about the diverse manifestations of surface dyslexia in adult neurological patients and in children with developmental disorders of reading. The data are drawn from speakers of a range of languages with distinct orthographies. Process models for the pronunciation of print are elaborated, and an appendix gives neurological information on the patients reported.

Beginning with his doctoral dissertation in 1950 which introduced the study of event perception and the application of vector analysis to perception, Gunnar Johansson has been a seminal figure in the field of perception. His work on biomechanical motion in the 1970s challenged conventional notions and stimulated great interest among experimental psychologists and students of machine vision. In 1989 Johansson published his latest theoretical synthesis, the optic sphere theory, an innovative conceptualization that goes beyond his earlier proposals.
This volume presents -- for the first time -- an extensive precis of the out-of-print classic 1950 monograph prepared by Johansson. It also includes a representative set of Johansson's important publications produced over the ensuing four decades. These papers served as the springboard for a set of original essays by a distinguished group of North American and European scientists. Part critical commentary, part elaboration, and part seeking new directions, the entire collection makes for a singularly rich treatment of the perception of objects and events.

This book develops a theory of picture perception and aesthetic response, arguing that images can generate in us a complex pattern of mental changes, or transformations. It is essential reading to those seriously involved in linking the arts and cognitive sciences.

Stroke, Body Image, and Self Representation provides a psychoanalytic reading of the subjective difficulties encountered by patients who have suffered a stroke. The book is based on the words of stroke patients and on their self-portraits, which are then compared with the words and portraits of subjects devoid of brain lesions. Pathological and normal self-portraits illustrate in very concrete terms the libidinal investment of our body parts. The author's original data sheds an entirely new light on the subjective effects of a stroke. On the one hand, the permanent sequelae of a stroke can cause a narcissistic injury; on the other, a stroke may affect the brain circuitry involved in the patient's body image, undoing the normal narcissistic reactions. This may happen after right hemisphere lesions and cause spectacular symptoms, such as the personification of a paralyzed hand or the apparent ignorance of a severe paralysis. This double aspect of a stroke is no small problem for rehabilitation therapists, who must avoid two pitfalls: considering any issue as psychological in nature, as if the brain lesion could not produce any organic changes, or, on the contrary, attributing any behavioural problems to brain dysfunction, as if the patient was devoid of normal psychological reactions. One of the aims of this book is to help therapists gaining their bearings in this little-known field. In addition to this clinical interest, the author's psychoanalytic reading brings an original contribution to the physiopathology of cognition and self-representation. The data gathered by Catherine Morin show that self-representation cannot be considered only a cognitive operation. They also suggest that normal cognitive activity relies on both the stability of body image and the repression of the object. Stroke, Body Image, and Self Representation will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and rehabilitation therapists working with stroke survivors and patients with body image disorders.

This book provides a state-of-the-art review of high-level vision and the brain. Topics covered include object representation and recognition, category-specific visual knowledge, perceptual processes in reading, top-down processes in vision -- including attention and mental imagery -- and the relations between vision and conscious awareness. Each chapter includes a tutorial overview emphasizing the current state of knowledge and outstanding theoretical issues in the authors' area of research, along with a more in-depth report of an illustrative research project in the same area.
The editors and contributors to this volume are among the most respected figures in the field of neuropsychology and perception, making the work presented here a standard-setting text and reference in that area.

This title was first published in 1981.

During the past decade a diverse group of disciplines have simultaneously intensified their attention upon the scientific study of emotion. This proliferation of research on affective phenomena has been paralleled by an acceleration of investigations of early human structural and functional development. Developmental neuroscience is now delving into the ontogeny of brain systems that evolve to support the psychobiological underpinnings of socioemotional functioning. Studies of the infant brain demonstrate that its maturation is influenced by the environment and is experience-dependent. Developmental psychological research emphasizes that the infant's expanding socioaffective functions are critically influenced by the affect-transacting experiences it has with the primary caregiver. Concurrent developmental psychoanalytic research suggests that the mother's affect regulatory functions permanently shape the emerging self's capacity for self-organization. Studies of incipient relational processes and their effects on developing structure are thus an excellent paradigm for the deeper apprehension of the organization and dynamics of affective phenomena.
This book brings together and presents the latest findings of socioemotional studies emerging from the developmental branches of various disciplines. It supplies psychological researchers and clinicians with relevant, up-to-date developmental neurobiological findings and insights, and exposes neuroscientists to recent developmental psychological and psychoanalytic studies of infants. The methodology of this theoretical research involves the integration of information that is being generated by the different fields that are studying the problem of socioaffective development--neurobiology, behavioral neurology, behavioral biology, sociobiology, social psychology, developmental psychology, developmental psychoanalysis, and infant psychiatry. A special emphasis is placed upon the application and incorporation of current developmental data from neurochemistry, neuroanatomy, neuropsychology, and neuroendocrinology into the main body of developmental theory.
More than just a review of several literatures, the studies cited in this work are used as a multidisciplinary source pool of experimental data, theoretical concepts, and clinical observations that form the base and scaffolding of an overarching heuristic model of socioemotional development that is grounded in contemporary neuroscience. This psychoneurobiological model is then used to generate a number of heuristic hypotheses regarding the proximal causes of a wide array of affect-related phenomena--from the motive force that drives human attachment to the proximal causes of psychiatric disturbances and psychosomatic disorders, and indeed to the origin of the self.

From Fossils to Mind, Volume 275 in the Progress in Brain Research series, presents chapters on a variety of interesting topics, including What could our premammalian ancestors hear, see, smell, and touch? A review of ten years of research about cynodont paleoneurology, Endocasts of ornithopod dinosaurs: anatomy and comparison, Adaptationism and Structuralism in Brain Evolution Research, Genomic approaches for tracing the evolution of brain ageing and neurodegenerative diseases, Investigating the Coevolution of Language and Tools in the Brain: An ALE Meta-analysis of Neural Activation During Syntactic Processing and Tool Use, and more.

Offering the broadest review of psychological perspectives on human expertise to date, this volume covers behavioral, computational, neural, and genetic approaches to understanding complex skill. The chapters show how performance in music, the arts, sports, games, medicine, and other domains reflects basic traits such as personality and intelligence, as well as knowledge and skills acquired through training. In doing so, this book moves the field of expertise beyond the duality of "nature vs. nurture" toward an integrative understanding of complex skill. This book is an invaluable resource for researchers and students interested in expertise, and for professionals seeking current reviews of psychological research on expertise.

Based upon lectures presented at an invitational colloquium in honor of Nico Frijda, this collection of essays represents a brief and up-to-date overview of the field of emotions, their significance and how they function. For most, emotions are simply what we feel, giving our lives affective value. Scientists approach emotions differently -- some considering the "feeling" aspect to be of little relevance to their research questions. Some investigators consider emotions from a phenomenological perspective, while others believe that the psychophysiological bases of the emotions are of prime importance, and still others observe and study animals in order to generate hypotheses about human emotions. Containing essays which represent each of these approaches, this book is in one sense a heterogenous collection. Nevertheless, the variety of approaches and interests come together, since these scholars are all operating from a more or less cognitive psychological orientation and use the same conceptual reference scheme. Written by experts in their own area, the essays reflect the richness of research in emotions. Whether these approaches and opinions can be harmonized into a single theory of emotions is a question which the future will have to answer.

Based upon lectures presented at an invitational colloquium in honor of Nico Frijda, this collection of essays represents a brief and up-to-date overview of the field of emotions, their significance and how they function. For most, emotions are simply what we feel, giving our lives affective value. Scientists approach emotions differently -- some considering the "feeling" aspect to be of little relevance to their research questions. Some investigators consider emotions from a phenomenological perspective, while others believe that the psychophysiological bases of the emotions are of prime importance, and still others observe and study animals in order to generate hypotheses about human emotions. Containing essays which represent each of these approaches, this book is in one sense a heterogenous collection. Nevertheless, the variety of approaches and interests come together, since these scholars are all operating from a more or less cognitive psychological orientation and use the same conceptual reference scheme. Written by experts in their own area, the essays reflect the richness of research in emotions. Whether these approaches and opinions can be harmonized into a single theory of emotions is a question which the future will have to answer.

This volume consists of expanded and updated versions of papers presented at the Seventh Ontario Symposium on Personality and Social Psychology. The series is designed to bring together scholars from across North America who work in the same substantive area, with the goals of identifying common concerns and integrating research findings.
The topic of this symposium was the psychology of prejudice and the presentations covered a wide variety of issues. The papers present state-of-the-art research programs addressing prejudice from the point of view of both the bigoted person as well as the victim of bigotry. The chapter authors confront this issue from two major -- and previously separate -- research traditions: the psychology of attitude and intergroup conflict. The chapters are organized in the following sequence of topics: the determinants and consequences of stereotypes, individual differences in prejudicial attitudes, intergroup relations, the responses of victims to prejudice and discrimination, and an integrative summary/commentary. Illustrating both the diversity and vitality of research on the psychology of prejudice, the editors hope that this volume will stimulate further research and theorizing in this area.

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

This book is written in an easy to read and at times humorous way with the hope of reaching an audience relatively unschooled in the field of psychiatry. It helps the reader to learn about the psychological interpretation of films and concepts of psychopathology and psychiatry.

Why do we gesture when we speak? The Cognitive Psychology of Speech-Related Gesture offers answers to this question while introducing readers to the huge interdisciplinary field of gesture. Drawing on ideas from cognitive psychology, this book highlights key debates in gesture research alongside advocating new approaches to conventional thinking. Beginning with the definition of the notion of communication, this book explores experimental approaches to gesture production and comprehension, the possible gestural origin of language and its implication for brain organization, and the development of gestural communication from infancy to childhood. Through these discussions the author presents the idea that speech-related gestures are not just peripheral phenomena, but rather a key function of the cognitive architecture, and should consequently be studied alongside traditional concepts in cognitive psychology. The Cognitive Psychology of Speech Related Gesture offers a broad overview which will be essential reading for all students of gesture research and language, as well as speech therapists, teachers and communication practitioners. It will also be of interest to anybody who is curious about why we move our bodies when we talk.

Now available in paperback, Emotions and Reasons provides an evaluative theory of emotions that assigns emotion a role of its own in the justification of action. Patricia Greenspan's approach contrasts with both the Cartesian identification of emotions with particular sensations and the currently popular account of them in terms of evaluative judgements.

The immense growth of research on implicit and explicit memory is making it difficult to keep up with new methods and findings, to gauge the implications of new discoveries, and to ferret out new directions in research and theory development. The present volume provides a status report of work on implicit and explicit memory in the three areas that have contributed the bulk of what is known about this domain -- cognitive psychology, lifespan developmental psychology, and neuropsychology. Highlighting developments in methods, critical findings, and theoretical positions, this volume outlines promising new research directions. By so doing, it provides the reader with a multi-disciplinary perspective on implicit and explicit memory, and thereby enables a cross- fertilization of ideas and research.
The chapters that make up this volume were written by experts on the topic of implicit and explicit memory. These contributors were asked to write for a broad audience -- for their colleagues from allied disciplines, for new researchers, for advanced undergraduate and graduate students -- to help them gain a comprehensive overview of the mushrooming research on this topic, grasp the most fundamental empirical and theoretical issues, and focus on new research directions.

This volume offers a comprehensive view of posters presented at the VIIth International Conference on Event Perception and Action. Arranged in order of appearance of their corresponding symposia on the conference program, this collection of 80 miniature articles on event perception and action represents the work of 136 researchers from 13 countries.

This 5th volume of the Appalachian Conference discusses how the brain processes information, the role of memory and value, and models of creativity. It pursues aspects of cognitive neuroscience and behavioral neurodynamics, such as the topic of values and quantum-distributed processing in the brain.

This volume utilizes various neurological diseases as its organizing principle, focusing specifically on their personal, social, and cognitive consequences. In so doing, it provides neuropsychologists, clinical psychologists, and those in related disciplines with an accessible survey of the available research on the psychological functioning of patients with the various disorders. Each chapter consists of a background review of the major features of one of the diseases, including symptom pattern, neuroanatomical bases, neuropathology, genetic factors, and epidemiology. Finally, the psychological and cognitive deficits established by research are reviewed, and their practical implications are discussed.