Since 1991, the edited book series Studies in Perception and Action has appeared in conjunction with the biennial International Conference of Perception and Action (ICPA), a conference that provides an opportunity for individuals who share interests in ecological psychology to come together to present current research, exchange ideas, and engage in conversation on theoretical and methodological concerns. The Studies in Perception and Action series is a way to preserve the dialogues between conference attendees and researchers displaying their latest work. This volume, the eighth in the series, presents the conversations held at the 13th ICPA meeting in the summer of 2005. Studies in Perception and Action VIII includes broad coverage of the most current advances in research on perceiving and acting, including contributions from researchers in Australia, China, Japan, Europe, and North America. It addresses cutting-edge research in dynamics and human movement, recent progress in ecological approaches to perceiving and acting, and substantially extends our knowledge of just how rich a source of information the world is across a wide range of modalities. This volume will appeal to individuals who follow the research literature in ecological psychology, as well as those interested in perception, perceptual development, human movement dynamics, and social processes.

Since 1991, the edited book series Studies in Perception and Action has appeared in conjunction with the biennial International Conference of Perception and Action (ICPA), a conference that provides an opportunity for individuals who share interests in ecological psychology to come together to present current research, exchange ideas, and engage in conversation on theoretical and methodological concerns. The Studies in Perception and Action series is a way to preserve the dialogues between conference attendees and researchers displaying their latest work. This volume, the eighth in the series, presents the conversations held at the 13th ICPA meeting in the summer of 2005.
 
"Studies in Perception and Action VIII "includes broad coverage of the most current advances in research on perceiving and acting, including contributions from researchers in Australia, China, Japan, Europe, and North America. It addresses cutting-edge research in dynamics and human movement, recent progress in ecological approaches to perceiving and acting, and substantially extends our knowledge of just how rich a source of information the world is across a wide range of modalities.
 
This volume will appeal to individuals who follow the research literature in ecological psychology, as well as those interested in perception, perceptual development, human movement dynamics, and social processes.

Over the past two decades theorists and researchers have given increasing attention to the effects, both beneficial and harmful, of various control related motivations and beliefs. People's notions of how much personal control they have or desire to have over important events in their lives have been used to explain a host of performance and adaptational outcomes, including motivational and performance deficits associated with learned helplessness (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) and depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989), adaptation to aging (Baltes & Baltes, 1986; Rodin, 1986), cardiovascular disease (Matthews, 1982), cancer (Sklar & Anisman, 1979), increased reports of physical symptoms (Pennebaker, 1982), enhanced learning (Savage, Perlmutter, & Monty, 1979), achievement-related behaviors (Dweck & Licht, 1980; Ryckman, 1979), and post abortion adjustment (Mueller & Major, 1989). The notion that control motivation plays a fundamental role in a variety of basic, social psychological processes also has a long historical tradition. A number of theorists (Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967), for example, have suggested that causal inferences arise from a desire to render the social world predictable and controllable. Similarly, control has been implicated as an important mediator of cognitive dissonance (Wicklund & Brehm, 1976) and attitude phenomena (Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Kiesler, Collins, & Miller, 1969). Despite the apparent centrality of control motivation to a variety of social psychological phenomena, until recently there has been relatively little research explicitly concerned with the effects of control motivation on the cognitive processes underlying such phenomena (cf."