Johannes Engelkamp – författare

Psychological experiments demonstrate that we remember self-performed actions better and more easily than actions performed by others, which we only perceived, or actions which were only reported to us. In everyday life, we remember whether or not we have already performed certain actions. Questions such as “Did you get some petrol?”, “Did you pay the waiter?”, “Have you posted the letter?” as a rule can be answered without difficulty. It would be embarrassing if we could not remember whether or not we had done something. Imagine forgetting that you had just put petrol in the car, and immediately driving to the next gas station to fill up again, or forgetting that you had paid the waiter in a restaurant and trying to pay again.Originally published in 1998. the aim of this book is to explain why we remember our own actions so well. In doing so, it offers a comprehensive survey of research and theory in this field of memory psychology. The author describes the development of this research in the light of recent theory.The broader objective of the book is to contribute to a theory of episodic memory. Although the study of memory for actions was derived from general assumptions about episodic memory, the studies quickly revealed new and surprising memory phenomena. Specific findings of memory for self-performed actions are discussed, which are entirely distinct from the laws of verbal learning. Through the discussion of these new memory phenomena, Memory for Actions makes an important contribution to the development of a general theory of episodic memory.

Imagery, Language and Visuo-Spatial Thinking discusses the remarkable human ability to use mental imagery in everyday life: from helping plan actions and routes to aiding creative thinking; from making sense of and remembering our immediate environment to generating pictures in our minds from verbal descriptions of scenes or people. The book also considers the important theme of how individuals differ in their ability to use imagery. With contributions from leading researchers in the field, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in cognitive psychology, cognitive science and cognitive neuropsychology.

Imagery, Language and Visuo-Spatial Thinking discusses the remarkable human ability to use mental imagery in everyday life: from helping plan actions and routes to aiding creative thinking; from making sense of and remembering our immediate environment to generating pictures in our minds from verbal descriptions of scenes or people. The book also considers the important theme of how individuals differ in their ability to use imagery. With contributions from leading researchers in the field, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in cognitive psychology, cognitive science and cognitive neuropsychology.

This book deals with the conditions and the consequences of the production of different syntactic sentence structures. During the sixties the syntactic structure of sentences was one of the most intensively studied topics in psycholinguistic research. The dominant interest did not, however, lie in the function of syntactic structures but in the ability to understand and to utter them. Later, in the seventies the interest shifted to the semantic structure of sentences. Many studies centred around the structural aspects of the repre­ sentation of knowledge. The leading question was: how can the meaning of an utterance be described? The widely accepted answer was: the central unit of meaning is the proposition. From this point of view, the aim of an utter­ ance is to transmit propositional meaning, and syntactic structure is of inter­ est only insofar as it influences the comprehension of propositional meaning. In this book both aspects, i. e. the syntactic and the semantic structure of sentences have been considered. The dynamic aspects of knowledge use and its relationship to the syntactic structure of sentences are thoroughly analysed and studied empirically. The main question is how semantic knowledge is communicated through syntactic structure. Syntactic structure has causes and consequences. In general we assume that the syntactic structure reflects dynamic aspects of the knowledge base of the speaker and determines dynamic states in the listener.

Dieses Lehrbuch gibt einen Überblick über „klassische“ Theorien, Modelle und Studien der Lern- und Gedächtnispsychologie. Darüber hinaus behandelt es das Thema „zielgerichtetes Verhalten“ und wie dieses mit Lern- und Gedächtnisprozessen zusammenhängt. Es dient damit als Einführung in die für das Psychologiestudium zentrale Grundlagenforschung zu Lern- und Gedächtnisprozessen, als Vertiefungslektüre in einigen ausgewählten Teilgebieten sowie als Fundament für die Anwendungsgebiete der Psychologie. Eine Begleit-Website auf www.lehrbuch-psychologie.de bietet Lern-Tools für Studierende und Materialien für Dozenten.