Short-listed for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, the Best Book of Ideas Prize, and the Society of Biology Book Awards - Book of the Year: Sunday Times, Sunday Express, and New Scientist

A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: rather than possessing fixed, unchanging memories, we create new recollections each time we are called upon to remember. As psychologist Charles Fernyhough explains, remembering is an act of narrative imagination as much as it is the product of a neurological process. In Pieces of Light, he illuminates this compelling scientific breakthrough in a series of personal stories, each illustrating memory's complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions.

Combining science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, this fascinating tour through the new science of autobiographical memory helps us better understand the ways we remember--and the ways we forget.

'I cannot think of a time in living memory when this book would have been more urgent or more necessary' Sarah Perry, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Essex Serpent 'There are some books which are necessary and there are some which are enjoyable and heart wrenching and wonderful; this is all of these things. A book to give to everyone you love' Daisy Johnson, Man Booker shortlisted author of Everything Under It doesn't take much familiarity with the news to see that the world has become a more hate-filled place. In Others, a group of writers explore the power of words to help us to see the world as others see it, and to reveal some of the strangeness of our own selves. Through stories, poems, memoirs and essays, we look at otherness in a variety of its forms, from the dividing lines of politics and the anonymising forces of city life, through the disputed identities of disability, gender and neurodiversity, to the catastrophic imbalances of power that stands in the way of social equality. Whether the theme is a casual act of racism or an everyday interaction with someone whose experience seems impossible to imagine, the collection challenges us to recognise our own otherness to those we would set apart as different. Profits from this book will be donated to Stop Hate UK, which works to raise awareness of hate crime and encourage its reporting, and Refugee Action, which provides advice and support to refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Contributors include: Leila Aboulela, Gillian Allnutt, Damian Barr, Noam Chomsky, Rishi Dastidar, Peter Ho Davies, Louise Doughty, Salena Godden, Colin Grant, Sam Guglani, Matt Haig, Aamer Hussein, Anjali Joseph, A. L. Kennedy, Joanne Limburg, Rachel Mann, Tiffany Murray, Sara Novic, Edward Platt, Alex Preston, Tom Shakespeare, Kamila Shamsie, Will Storr, Preti Taneja and Marina Warner. 'An impressive cluster of names' New Statesman'Another superlative anthology from Unbound' The Bookseller

This set collects together inaccessible journal articles and extracts from books to guide the reader to the most important and relevant issues in educational and child development today. Some of the most exciting ideas to influence developmental psychology this century are those of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. All developmental psychology courses now include the work of Vygotsky as his ideas challenge existing theorists like Piaget.
Lev Vygotsky: Critical Assessments reveals Vygotsky's ideas about the way children learn and the role of thought and language, and demonstrates the educational implications of his work. Vygotsky's ideas offered an entirely separate and new approach to child development and children's education.
Volume One: Vygotsky's Theory
Volume Two: Thought and Language
Volume Three: The Zone of Proximal Development
Volume Four: Future Directions

We all hear voices. Ordinary thinking is often a kind of conversation, filling our heads with speech: the voices of reason, of memory, of self-encouragement and rebuke, the inner dialogue that helps us with tough decisions or complicated problems. For others - voice-hearers, trauma-sufferers and prophets - the voices seem to come from outside: friendly voices, malicious ones, the voice of God or the Devil, the muses of art and literature. In The Voices Within, Royal Society Prize shortlisted psychologist Charles Fernyhough draws on extensive original research and a wealth of cultural touchpoints to reveal the workings of our inner voices, and how those voices link to creativity and development. From Virginia Woolf to the modern Hearing Voices Movement, Fernyhough also transforms our understanding of voice-hearers past and present. Building on the latest theories, including the new 'dialogic thinking' model, and employing state-of-the-art neuroimaging and other ground-breaking research techniques, Fernyhough has written an authoritative and engaging guide to the voices in our heads. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

Shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize 2013 and the 2013 Best Book of Ideas Prize. Memory is an essential part of who we are. But what are memories, and how are they created? A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: rather than possessing a particular memory from our past, like a snapshot, we construct it anew each time we are called upon to remember. Remembering is an act of narrative as much as it is the product of a neurological process. Pieces of Light illuminates this theory through a collection of human stories, each illustrating a facet of memory's complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions. Drawing on case studies, personal experience and the latest research, Charles Fernyhough delves into the memories of the very young and very old, and explores how amnesia and trauma can affect how we view the past. Exquisitely written and meticulously researched, Pieces of Light blends science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, to illuminate the way we remember and forget.

Seventy-five years after Vygotsky s death, scholarship exploring developmental relations between language and thought continues to be strong. This timely edited volume compiles contributions from international leaders in the field on the roles of language and private speech (self-talk) in the development of self-regulation and executive functioning in children and adults. New theoretical insights, empirical research, and potential clinical and educational applications of scholarship on private speech are presented. Relevant for undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of psychology, education, linguistics, and cognitive science, this text will be an essential volume for those interested in the interface between language, cognition, and behavior, and the development of regulatory or cognitive control over behavior.

For Charles Fernyhough, the birth of his daughter Athena was an opportunity to view the psychological development and growth of a child first hand. Integrating scientific research with careful observation and questioning, this unique study investigates what it is like to be a newborn baby, an infant on the threshold of language, and a toddler testing out autonomy. Using Athena as a case study, Fernyhough vividly describes the huge amount of mental work children undertake right from birth, including the newborn's task of learning about objects and people; the toddler's forging of a self; the development of a sense of time and space; and the process of coming to grasp with the transforming power of the imagination. En route, he explains in simple terminology the ideas of the great child psychologists--including Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bowlby--and introduces some of the latest neuroscientific and developmental research. Written with a father's tenderness and a keen scientific eye, this funny, touching, and fascinating investigation will allow parents and all those interested by child development to understand the extraordinary journey a child makes during the first three years of life.

A father's intimate look at his daughter's developing mind from birth to age three.
Unlike any other time in our lives, we remember almost nothing from our first three years. As infants, not only are we like the proverbial blank slate, but our memories are like Teflon: nothing sticks. In this beautifully written memoir of his daughter's first three years, Charles Fernyhough combines his vivid observations with a synthesis of developmental theory, re-creating what that time, lost to the memory of adults, is like from a child's perspective.
In "A Thousand Days of Wonder," Fernyhough, a psychologist and novelist, attempts to get inside his daughter Athena's head as she acquires all the faculties that make us human, including social skills, language, morality, and a sense of self. Written with a father's tenderness and a novelist's empathy and style, this unique book taps into a parent's wonder at the processes of psychological development.
Funny, touching, and fascinating, "A Thousand Days of Wonder" will reveal the extraordinary journey into personhood that children make during the momentous first three years of life.