This book examines a key issue in current cognitive theories - the nature of representation. Each chapter is characterized by attempts to frame hot topics in cognitive development within the landscape of current developmental theorizing and the past legacy of genetic epistemology. The chapters address four questions that are fundamental to any developmental line of inquiry:

• How should we represent the workings and contents of the mind?
• How does the child construct mental models during the course of development?
• What are the origins of these models? and
• What accounts for the novelties that are the products and producers of developmental change?

These questions are situated in a historical context, Piagetian theory, and contemporary researchers attempt to trace how they draw upon, depart from, and transform the Piagetian legacy to revisit classic issues such as the child's awareness of the workings of mental life, the child's ability to represent the world, and the child's growing ability to process and learn from experience. The theoretical perspectives covered include constructivism, connectionism, theory-theory, information processing, dynamical systems, and social constructivist approaches. The research areas span imitation, mathematical reasoning, biological knowledge, language development, and theory of mind.

Written by major contributors to the field, this work will be of interest to students and researchers wanting a brief but in-depth overview of the contemporary field of cognitive development.

This book examines a key issue in current cognitive theories - the nature of representation. Each chapter is characterized by attempts to frame hot topics in cognitive development within the landscape of current developmental theorizing and the past legacy of genetic epistemology. The chapters address four questions that are fundamental to any developmental line of inquiry: How should we represent the workings and contents of the mind? How does the child construct mental models during the course of development? What are the origins of these models? and What accounts for the novelties that are the products and producers of developmental change? These questions are situated in a historical context, Piagetian theory, and contemporary researchers attempt to trace how they draw upon, depart from, and transform the Piagetian legacy to revisit classic issues such as the child's awareness of the workings of mental life, the child's ability to represent the world, and the child's growing ability to process and learn from experience. The theoretical perspectives covered include constructivism, connectionism, theory-theory, information processing, dynamical systems, and social constructivist approaches. The research areas span imitation, mathematical reasoning, biological knowledge, language development, and theory of mind. Written by major contributors to the field, this work will be of interest to students and researchers wanting a brief but in-depth overview of the contemporary field of cognitive development.

Navigating the social world requires sophisticated cognitive machinery that, although present quite early in crude forms, undergoes significant change across the lifespan. This book will be the first to report on evidence that has accumulated on an unprecedented scale, showing us what capacities for social cognition are present at birth and early in life, and how these capacities develop through learning in the first years of life. The volume will highlight what is known about the discoveries themselves but also what these discoveries imply about the nature of early social cognition and the methods that have allowed these discoveries -- what is known concerning the phylogeny and ontogeny of social cognition. To capture the full depth and breadth of the exciting work that is blossoming on this topic in a manner that is accessible and engaging, the editors invited 70 leading researchers to develop a short report of their work that would be written for a broad audience. The purpose of this format was for each piece to focus on a single core message: are babies aware of what is right and wrong, why do children have the same implicit intergroup preferences that adults do, what does language do to the building of category knowledge, and so on. The unique format and accessible writing style will be appealing to graduate students and researchers in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and social psychology.

From the time of birth through the early school years, young children rapidly acquire two complex cognitive systems: They organize their experiences into concepts and categories, and they acquire their first language. How do children accomplish these critical tasks? How do conceptual systems influence the structure of the language we speak? How do linguistic patterns influence how we view reality? These questions have captured the interest of such theorists as Piaget, Vygotsky, Chomsky and Whorf but until recently very little has been known about the relation between language and thought during development. Perspectives on Language and Thought presents current observational and experimental research on the links between thought and language in young children. Chapters from leading figures in the field focus on the acquisition of hierarchical category systems, concepts of time, causality, and logic and the nature of language learning in both peer and adult-child social interactions.

What is the nature of human thought? A long dominant view holds that the mind is a general problem-solving device that approaches all questions in much the same way. Chomsky's theory of language, which revolutionized linguistics, challenged this claim, contending that children are primed to acquire some skills, such as language, in a manner largely independent of their ability to solve other sorts of apparently similar mental problems. In recent years, researchers in anthropology, psychology, linguistics and neuroscience have examined whether other mental skills are similarly independent. Many have concluded that much of human thought is "domain-specific." Thus, the mind is better viewed as a collection of cognitive abilities specialized to handle specific tasks than as a general problem solver. Mapping the Mind introduces a general audience to a domain-specificity perspective, by compiling a collection of essays exploring how several of these cognitive abilities are organized. This volume is appropriate as a reader for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, developmental and cognitive psychology.

From the time of birth through the early school years, young children rapidly acquire two complex cognitive systems: They organize their experiences into concepts and categories, and they acquire their first language. How do children accomplish these critical tasks? How do conceptual systems influence the structure of the language we speak? How do linguistic patterns influence how we view reality? These questions have captured the interest of such theorists as Piaget, Vygotsky, Chomsky, and Whorf but until recently very little has been known about the relation between language and thought during development. Perspectives on Language and Thought presents current observational and experimental research on the links between thought and language in young children. Chapters from leading figures in the field focus on the acquisition of hierarchical category systems, concepts of time, causality, and logic, and the nature of language learning in both peer and adult-child social interactions. Four major themes are presented. First, children honor constraints or biases that limit the possible meanings they consider when learning new words.

The 4th Workshop on Case Studies in Bayesian Statistics was held at the Car negie Mellon University campus on September 27-28, 1997. As in the past, the workshop featured both invited and contributed case studies. The former were presented and discussed in detail while the latter were presented in poster format. This volume contains the four invited case studies with the accompanying discus sion as well as nine contributed papers selected by a refereeing process. While most of the case studies in the volume come from biomedical research the reader will also find studies in environmental science and marketing research. INVITED PAPERS In Modeling Customer Survey Data, Linda A. Clark, William S. Cleveland, Lorraine Denby, and Chuanhai LiD use hierarchical modeling with time series components in for customer value analysis (CVA) data from Lucent Technologies. The data were derived from surveys of customers of the company and its competi tors, designed to assess relative performance on a spectrum of issues including product and service quality and pricing. The model provides a full description of the CVA data, with random location and scale effects for survey respondents and longitudinal company effects for each attribute. In addition to assessing the performance of specific companies, the model allows the empirical exploration of the conceptual basis of consumer value analysis. The authors place special em phasis on graphical displays for this complex, multivariate set of data and include a wealth of such plots in the paper."

This book brings together a collection of articles on statistical methods relating to missing data analysis, including multiple imputation, propensity scores, instrumental variables, and Bayesian inference. Covering new research topics and real--world examples which do not feature in many standard texts. The book is dedicated to Professor Don Rubin (Harvard). Don Rubin has made fundamental contributions to the study of missing data. Key features of the book include:* Comprehensive coverage of an imporant area for both research and applications.* Adopts a pragmatic approach to describing a wide range of intermediate and advanced statistical techniques.* Covers key topics such as multiple imputation, propensity scores, instrumental variables and Bayesian inference.* Includes a number of applications from the social and health sciences.* Edited and authored by highly respected researchers in the area.

From x-rays to lasers to magnetic resonance imaging, developments in basic physics research have been transformed into medical technologies for imaging, surgery and therapy at an ever-accelerating pace. Physics has joined with genetics and molecular biology to define much of what is modern in modern medicine and allied health. Covering a wide range of applications, Introduction to Physics in Modern Medicine, Third Edition builds further on the bestselling second edition. Based on the courses taught by the authors, the book provides medical personnel and students with an exploration of the physics-related applications found in state-of-the-art medical centers. Requiring no previous acquaintance with physics, biology, or chemistry and keeping mathematics to a minimum, the application-dedicated chapters adhere to simple and self-contained qualitative explanations that make use of examples, illustrations, clinical applications, sample calculations, and exercises. With an enhanced emphasis on digital imaging and computers in medicine, the text gives readers a fundamental understanding of the practical application of each concept and the basic science behind it. This book provides medical students with an excellent introduction to how physics is applied in medicine, while also providing students in physics with an introduction to medical physics. Each chapter includes worked examples and a complete list of problems and questions. That so much of the technology discussed in this book was the stuff of dreams just a few years ago, makes this book as fascinating as it is practical, both for those in medicine as well as those in physics who might one day discover that the project they are working on is the basis for the next great medical application. Features: * Introduces state-of-the-art and emerging medical technologies such as optical coherence tomography, x-ray phase contrast imaging, and ultrasound-mediated drug delivery * Covers hybrid scanners for cancer imaging and the interplay of molecular medicine with MRI, CT and PET in addition to intensity-modulated radiation therapy and new forms of cancer treatments such as proton and heavy-ion therapies * Offers an enhanced emphasis on digital imaging and dosimetry including recent innovations in the pixel-array x-ray detectors, ultrasound matrix transducers and direct-ion storage dosimeters

From x-rays to lasers to magnetic resonance imaging, developments in basic physics research have been transformed into medical technologies for imaging, surgery and therapy at an ever-accelerating pace. Physics has joined with genetics and molecular biology to define much of what is modern in modern medicine and allied health. Covering a wide range of applications, Introduction to Physics in Modern Medicine, Third Edition builds further on the bestselling second edition. Based on the courses taught by the authors, the book provides medical personnel and students with an exploration of the physics-related applications found in state-of-the-art medical centers. Requiring no previous acquaintance with physics, biology, or chemistry and keeping mathematics to a minimum, the application-dedicated chapters adhere to simple and self-contained qualitative explanations that make use of examples, illustrations, clinical applications, sample calculations, and exercises. With an enhanced emphasis on digital imaging and computers in medicine, the text gives readers a fundamental understanding of the practical application of each concept and the basic science behind it. This book provides medical students with an excellent introduction to how physics is applied in medicine, while also providing students in physics with an introduction to medical physics. Each chapter includes worked examples and a complete list of problems and questions. That so much of the technology discussed in this book was the stuff of dreams just a few years ago, makes this book as fascinating as it is practical, both for those in medicine as well as those in physics who might one day discover that the project they are working on is the basis for the next great medical application. Features: * Introduces state-of-the-art and emerging medical technologies such as optical coherence tomography, x-ray phase contrast imaging, and ultrasound-mediated drug delivery * Covers hybrid scanners for cancer imaging and the interplay of molecular medicine with MRI, CT and PET in addition to intensity-modulated radiation therapy and new forms of cancer treatments such as proton and heavy-ion therapies * Offers an enhanced emphasis on digital imaging and dosimetry including recent innovations in the pixel-array x-ray detectors, ultrasound matrix transducers and direct-ion storage dosimeters

Essentialism is the idea that certain categories, such as "dog," "man," or "intelligence," have an underlying reality or true nature that gives objects their identity. Where does this idea come from? In this book, Susan Gelman argues that essentialism is an early cognitive bias. Young children's concepts reflect a deep commitment to essentialism, and this commitment leads children to look beyond the obvious in many converging ways: when learning words, generalizing knowledge to new category members, reasoning about the insides of things, contemplating the role of nature versus nurture, and constructing causal explanations. Gelman argues against the standard view of children as concrete or focused on the obvious, instead claiming that children have an early, powerful tendency to search for hidden, non-obvious features of things. She also attacks claims that children build up their knowledge of the world based on simple, associative learning strategies, arguing that children's concepts are embedded in rich folk theories. Parents don't explicitly teach children to essentialize; instead, during the preschool years, children spontaneously construct concepts and beliefs that reflect an essentialist bias.
Essentialist accounts have been offered, in one form or another, for thousands of years, extending back at least to Aristotle and Plato. Yet this book is the first to address the issues surrounding essentialism from a psychological perspective. Gelman synthesizes over 15 years of empirical research on essentialism into a unified framework and explores the broader lessons that the research imparts concerning, among other things, human concepts, children's thinking, and the ways in whichlanguage influences thought. This volume will appeal to developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists, as well as to scholars in cognitive science and philosophy.

Numerous fields stake claims about essentialism but this is the first book to address the issues surrounding essentialism from the perspective of developmental psychology. Gelman synthesizes 15 years of empirical research on essentialism into a coherent framework, examining children's thinking and ways in which language influences thought. She argues that young children's use of concepts such as "dog," "man," or "intelligence," reflects their deep commitment to the presence of these categories' properties that extends beyond the observable information about objects. The presence of this commitment in children also means that they do not come into the world as passive recipients of data, but rather have an organizational scheme that supports categories. This volume will be of interest to developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists, as well as to scholars in cognitive science and philosophy.

Navigating the social world requires sophisticated cognitive machinery that, although present quite early in crude forms, undergoes significant change across the lifespan. This book will be the first to report on evidence that has accumulated on an unprecedented scale, showing us what capacities for social cognition are present at birth and early in life, and how these capacities develop through learning in the first years of life. The volume will highlight what is known about the discoveries themselves but also what these discoveries imply about the nature of early social cognition and the methods that have allowed these discoveries -- what is known concerning the phylogeny and ontogeny of social cognition. To capture the full depth and breadth of the exciting work that is blossoming on this topic in a manner that is accessible and engaging, the editors invited 70 leading researchers to develop a short report of their work that would be written for a broad audience. The purpose of this format was for each piece to focus on a single core message: are babies aware of what is right and wrong, why do children have the same implicit intergroup preferences that adults do, what does language do to the building of category knowledge, and so on. The unique format and accessible writing style will be appealing to graduate students and researchers in cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and social psychology.

The field of cognitive development is an exciting one that has undergone a revolution in the past generation, with a wealth of new findings, methods and theoretical ideas that transform our understanding of children's thinking. This new SAGE Major Work presents a collection of important papers - both classic and contemporary - that cover key contributions in the area of cognitive development in children, designed to be a touchstone text for scholars, practitioners and educators with an interest in children's thinking. Although the primary focus is on basic scientific research, each volume also discusses important applied issues, such as role of critical periods in perceptual development, or the implications of cognitive development for learning in academic contexts. Volume One: Basic Processes Volume Two: Concepts, Categories and Language Volume Three: Core Theories Volume Four: Reasoning, Problem-Solving and Academic Skills Volume Five: Context and Culture