Current robots and other artificial systems are typically able to accomplish only one single task. Overcoming this limitation requires the development of control architectures and learning algorithms that can support the acquisition and deployment of several different skills, which in turn seems to require a modular and hierarchical organization. In this way, different modules can acquire different skills without catastrophic interference, and higher-level components of the system can solve complex tasks by exploiting the skills encapsulated in the lower-level modules. While machine learning and robotics recognize the fundamental importance of the hierarchical organization of behavior for building robots that scale up to solve complex tasks, research in psychology and neuroscience shows increasing evidence that modularity and hierarchy are pivotal organization principles of behavior and of the brain. They might even lead to the cumulative acquisition of an ever-increasing number of skills, which seems to be a characteristic of mammals, and humans in particular. This book is a comprehensive overview of the state of the art on the modeling of the hierarchical organization of behavior in animals, and on its exploitation in robot controllers. The book perspective is highly interdisciplinary, featuring models belonging to all relevant areas, including machine learning, robotics, neural networks, and computational modeling in psychology and neuroscience. The book chapters review the authors' most recent contributions to the investigation of hierarchical behavior, and highlight the open questions and most promising research directions. As the contributing authors are among the pioneers carrying out fundamental work on this topic, the book covers the most important and topical issues in the field from a computationally informed, theoretically oriented perspective. The book will be of benefit to academic and industrial researchers and graduate students in related disciplines.

The third edition of Handbook of Marriage and the Family describes, analyzes, synthesizes, and critiques the current research and theory about family relationships, family structural variations, and the role of families in society. This updated Handbook provides the most comprehensive state-of-the art assessment of the existing knowledge of family life, with particular attention to variations due to gender, socioeconomic, race, ethnic, cultural, and life-style diversity. The Handbook also aims to provide the best synthesis of our existing scholarship on families that will be a primary source for scholars and professionals but also serve as the primary graduate text for graduate courses on family relationships and the roles of families in society. In addition, the involvement of chapter authors from a variety of fields including family psychology, family sociology, child development, family studies, public health, and family therapy, gives the Handbook a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary framework.

Surveys are used extensively in psychology, sociology and business, as well as many other areas, but they are becoming increasingly difficult to conduct. Some segments of the population are hard to sample, some are hard to find, others are hard to persuade to participate in surveys, and still others are hard to interview. This book offers the first systematic look at the populations and settings that make surveys hard to conduct and at the methods researchers use to meet these challenges. It covers a wide range of populations (immigrants, persons with intellectual difficulties, and political extremists) and settings (war zones, homeless shelters) that offer special problems or present unusual challenges for surveys. The team of international contributors also addresses sampling strategies including methods such as respondent-driven sampling and examines data collection strategies including advertising and other methods for engaging otherwise difficult populations.

This book is a first attempt to combine insights from the two perspectives with regard to the question of meaning by examining a collection of theoretical and empirical works. This volume therefore is destined to become an important addition to psychological literature: both from the viewpoint of the history of ideas (again this would be one of the first times that positive and existentialist psychologies meet) and from the viewpoint of theoretical and empirical research into the meaning concept in psychology.

This volume is the most comprehensive reference book on community sentiment available. The classic book about community sentiment is Norm Finkel's "Commonsense Justice: Jurors' Notions of the Law" (1995). A similarly influential book called "Justice, Liability, and Blame" was published at the same time, examining lay sentiment about a variety of criminal issues and suggesting ways in which the substantive criminal law could be reformed in light of such lay responses (Robinson & Darley, 1995). Although these books were influential and important for their time (and since), this Handbook expands significantly on them, both by updating research since that time and broadens the scope of topic areas to ones that are not limited to trial and criminal justice issues. Each chapter is original/unpublished and focuses on an area related to children/families, many of which are "hot topic" areas in the news and courts today. For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case in June 2012 about the constitutionality of "life without parole" for juvenile offenders-a topic discussed in the Fass and Miora chapter. Thus, it is of interest to those interested in family law topics as well.

This book introduces the latest meta-analytical methods and discusses their applications in the field of psychiatry. A comprehensive list of methods used in meta-analysis has been described in simple language and demonstrated with real-time examples. This informative volume explains the importance of meta-analysis and describes how it differs from narrative and systematic reviews. It also relates the historical development of meta-analysis and explains methods used for locating and selecting the required studies in a given domain. Suitable software is examined in detail as well.

This textbook provides in-depth instruction for conducting psychoeducational assessments of children in grades K-12 and conveying results through detailed, well-written reports. It takes readers step by step through the assessment process - collecting data, writing reports, and communicating conclusions - for students with conditions spanning the range of IDEA classifications such as autism, learning disabilities, emotional disturbances, and conditions covered by Section 504. The book offers not only a broad understanding of assessment and communication skills, but also of the ethical, legal, cultural, and professional considerations that come with psychoeducational evaluation. And its sample reports model clear, well-organized results accessible to parents and caregivers as well as teachers and colleagues. Key areas of coverage include: * Assessment basics: the testing environment and protocols, interviewing, and observation. * Report writing section by section, from reason for referral to summary and recommendations. * Guidelines for oral reporting, with case examples. * Special issues in psychoeducational assessment and report writing. * Sample psychoeducational reports using this framework. Psychoeducational Assessment and Report Writing is an essential text for graduate students, researchers, professors, and professionals in child and school psychology; assessment, testing, and evaluation; social work; and psychological methods/evaluation.

A comprehensive collection by Professor Cary Cooper and his colleagues in the field of workplace stress and wellbeing, which draws on research in a number of areas including stress-strain relationships, sources of workplace stress and stressful occupations. Volume 2 of 2.

A comprehensive collection by Professor Cary Cooper and his colleagues in the field of workplace stress and wellbeing, which draws on research in a number of areas including stress-strain relationships, sources of workplace stress and stressful occupations. Volume 1 of 2.

R is a powerful and free software system for data analysis and graphics, with over 5,000 add-on packages available. This book introduces R using SAS and SPSS terms with which you are already familiar. It demonstrates which of the add-on packages are most like SAS and SPSS and compares them to R's built-in functions. It steps through over 30 programs written in all three packages, comparing and contrasting the packages' differing approaches. The programs and practice datasets are available for download. The glossary defines over 50 R terms using SAS/SPSS jargon and again using R jargon. The table of contents and the index allow you to find equivalent R functions by looking up both SAS statements and SPSS commands. When finished, you will be able to import data, manage and transform it, create publication quality graphics, and perform basic statistical analyses. This new edition has updated programming, an expanded index, and even more statistical methods covered in over 25 new sections.

The 78th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS) builds on the Psychometric Society's mission to share quantitative methods relevant to psychology. The chapters of this volume present cutting-edge work in the field. Topics include studies of item response theory, computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic modeling, and psychological scaling. Additional psychometric topics relate to structural equation modeling, factor analysis, causal modeling, mediation, missing data methods, and longitudinal data analysis, among others. The papers in this volume will be especially useful for researchers in the social sciences who use quantitative methods. Prior knowledge of statistical methods is recommended. The 78th annual meeting took place in Arnhem, The Netherlands between July 22nd and 26th, 2013. The previous volume to showcase work from the Psychometric Society's Meeting is New Developments in Quantitative Psychology: Presentations from the 77th Annual Psychometric Society Meeting (Springer, 2014).

While empirical, scientific research has much to offer to the practice-oriented therapist in training, it is often difficult to effectively engage the trainee, beginning practitioner, or graduate student in the subject of research. This fully revised and expanded edition of Research for the Psychotherapist is an engaging, accessible guide that bridges the gap between gathering, analyzing, presenting, and discussing research and incorporating that research into practice. The authors present concise chapters that distill research findings and clearly apply them to practical issues, while also helping readers progress as consumers of relevant research.

The presentation of mental illness at work has different implications and consequences depending on the specific nature of the job, work context, regulatory framework and risks for the employee, organisation and society. Naturally there are certain occupational groups where human factors and/or mental illness could impair safety and mental acuity, and with potentially devastating consequences. For pilots, the medical criteria for crew licensing are stipulated by regulatory aviation authorities worldwide, and these include specific mental illness exclusions. The challenge of assessment for mental health problems is, however, complex and the responsibility for psychological screening and testing falls to a range of different specialists and groups including AMEs (authorised aviation medical examiners), GPs and physicians, airline human resources departments, psychologists, human factor specialists and pilots themselves. Extending and developing the ideas of Aviation Mental Health (2006), which described a range of psychological issues and problems that may affect pilots and the consequences of these, this book presents an authoritative, comprehensive and practical guide to modern, evidence-based practice in the field of mental health assessment, treatment and care. It features contributions from experts in the field drawn from several countries, professions and representing a range of aviation-related organisations, displaying a range of different skills and methods that can be used for the clinical assessment of pilots and in relation to specific mental-health problems and syndromes.

Awarded the 2019 Most Promising New Textbook Award by the Textbook & Academic Authors Association. This accessible and entertaining new textbook provides students with the knowledge and skills they need to understand the barrage of numbers encountered in their everyday lives and studies. Almost all the statistics in the news, on social media or in scientific reports are based on just a few core concepts, including measurement (ensuring we count the right thing), causation (determining whether one thing causes another) and sampling (using just a few people to understand a whole population). By explaining these concepts in plain language, without complex mathematics, this book prepares students to meet the statistical world head on and to begin their own quantitative research projects. Ideal for students facing statistical research for the first time, or for anyone interested in understanding more about the numbers in the news, this textbook helps students to see beyond the headlines and behind the numbers.

The rising reliance on testing in American education and for licensure and certification has been accompanied by an escalation in cheating on tests at all levels. Edited by two of the foremost experts on the subject, the Handbook of Quantitative Methods for Detecting Cheating on Tests offers a comprehensive compendium of increasingly sophisticated data forensics used to investigate whether or not cheating has occurred. Written for practitioners, testing professionals, and scholars in testing, measurement, and assessment, this volume builds on the claim that statistical evidence often requires less of an inferential leap to conclude that cheating has taken place than do other, more common sources of evidence. This handbook is organized into sections that roughly correspond to the kinds of threats to fair testing represented by different forms of cheating. In Section I, the editors outline the fundamentals and significance of cheating, and they introduce the common datasets to which chapter authors' cheating detection methods were applied. Contributors describe, in Section II, methods for identifying cheating in terms of improbable similarity in test responses, preknowledge and compromised test content, and test tampering. Chapters in Section III concentrate on policy and practical implications of using quantitative detection methods. Synthesis across methodological chapters as well as an overall summary, conclusions, and next steps for the field are the key aspects of the final section.

In a multimethod laboratory study Alessia Ruf compared multimodal learning in system-paced and self-paced environments over time. The results show that overall participants achieved the highest learning success in short- and long-term when they learned with visual texts and controlled the learning time by themselves. These results reveal a general impression of the modality effect, show possibilities to improve e-learning systems and give recommendations for further research.

First published in 1940, as the fourth edition of a 1911 original, this book forms part of The Cambridge Psychological Library series. The text is divided into two main sections, with the first part discussing aspects of psychophysics and the second focusing on the area of correlation. Detailed notes and numerous tables are contained throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of psychology and mental measurement.

A Resource for Designing and Implementing Intervention Programs for At-Risk Learners

This authoritative resource provides step-by-step procedures for planning, selecting, and tailoring interventions for at-risk learners with a unique focus on how to individualize interventions using actual case examples. In addition, this volume offers guidelines for gathering and interpreting data in a manner that assists in identifying targets for intervention and rich discussion and information relating to specific academic, cognitive, and behavioral manifestations of students with learning difficulties in reading, math, writing, and oral language. Practitioners will also recognize and learn how to intervene with students from underserved and mis-served populations who are at risk for learning failure including English-language learners and students from impoverished environments.

Each chapter describes how specific difficulties interfere with classroom tasks and explain how to select, modify, or otherwise tailor an intervention based on that information. As with all volumes in the "Essentials of Psychological Assessment" series, this volume includes callout boxes highlighting key concepts, extensive illustrative material, and test questions. The companion CD-ROM provides additional worksheets, case studies, and handouts.

This book provides first time insight into whether emotions impact performance of an online ability test. This question is gaining in relevance as online assessment is used increasingly in personnel selection and since it has been shown that emotions impact the way humans think. Moreover, the author demonstrates, for the first time, how short film clips can elicit different emotions in an online setting. Furthermore, she gives an overview of the area of online assessment, of models of intelligence and emotion, and of how emotion and cognition interact.

Cognitive deficits are part of the normal ageing process and are exacerbated by various diseases that affect adults in old age, such as dementia, depression, and stroke. A significant scientific and social effort has been expended to evaluate whether cognitive deficits can be remedied through systematic interventions. The editors, as well as the chapter authors, represent a variety of viewpoints that span theory as well as practice. Overall, they aim to address concepts in cognitive rehabilitation that are useful in intervention research -- research which examines problems and issues in normal and pathological aging -- and focusing on the application of cognitive training strategies in natural settings. Thus, the book is grounded in contemporary theory in cognitive ageing and is applicable to both the practicing clinician as well as the researcher. It is organized into four sections. The first highlights prominent theoretical principles; the second looks at cognitive rehabilitation strategies in normal ageing; the third examines the interplay between lifestyle patterns and cognitive function through applying a broad definition of lifestyle choices; and the fourth focuses on rehabilitation strategies that address issues in pathological (or diseased) ageing.

Although humans slumber for approximately one third of our lives, sleep itself is vastly understudied. This volume provides a comparative frame through which we can understand the myriad ways in which sleep reflects and embodies culture as contributors examine aspects of sleep in various countries and contexts.

The field of psychometrics has a long and varied tradition across the social sciences. A range of academics have sought to understand human consciousness more fully by statistical testing our abilities, personalities, attitudes and beliefs. But perhaps the area where psychometric techniques have had most impact on contemporary society is in employee recruitment, where a range of psychometric tests have become common-place. Professor Peter Saville is one of the pioneers of adapting psychometric testing to the field of occupational psychology and human resource management. In a career of nearly 40 years, his work has been adopted by hundreds of public and private organizations, assessing the suitability of prospective candidates through a range of questionnaires and tests. In this anthology of his work, including both keynote conference address and journal papers, Saville provides a masterly overview of the field of psychometrics, and the key issues and questions that it raises. An ideal companion for any student or researcher of HRM, occupational or organizational psychology, or applied psychology in general, Peter Saville's selected works represent the thinking of one of the most influential psychologists of our time.

BASIC STATISTICS FOR THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, International Edition demystifies and fully explains statistics without leaving out relevant topics or simply presenting formulas, in a format that is non-threatening and inviting to students. The author's clear, patiently crafted explanations, with an occasional touch of humor, teach students not only how to compute an answer, but also why they should perform the procedure or what their answer reveals about the data. The book achieves several objectives: it presents a conceptual-intuitive approach, presents statistics within an understandable research context, deals directly and positively with student weaknesses in mathematics, and introduces new terms and concepts in an integrated way. The result is a text that students can learn from as well as enjoy.

Practical Research with Children is designed to help the reader understand techniques for research with children, based on real world experience. The book describes a wide range of research methods, focusing equally on quantitative and qualitative approaches, and considers how different methods can be integrated. It highlights the benefits and challenges of each method and gives emphasis to best practice, with expert guidance on how to avoid potential pitfalls in order to obtain valuable insights into how children develop. The volume includes fifteen chapters arranged over three sections. Each chapter explores a particular method, or combination of methods, and discusses both theoretical and practical issues, using a diversity of domains, including different ages, cultures, populations and settings. Uniquely, the book includes newer methods (such as eye tracking and digital technologies) alongside well-established behavioural methods which are used for research with children. With contributions from internationally renowned researchers and practitioners from a range of disciplines, the book will be indispensable reading for a wide audience, including for students in psychology, education and nursing undertaking research projects with children, and also for anyone looking to understand the research behind current theories in child development.

Psychic Retreats are states of mind to which patients can withdraw to evade anxiety and mental pain. The patient who does so excessively gets drawn into a tight knit web of relationships which become organised into a complex structure called a pathological organisation of the personality. This leads to the patient being "stuck" in their life and in their analysis. Using current Kleinian theory, John Steiner examines how Psychic Retreats are constructed and how analysts can treat them.

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