Ulric Neisser - Böcker

The role played by testing in the nation's public school system has been increasing steadily-and growing more complicated-for more than 20 years. The Committee on Educational Excellence and Testing Equity (CEETE) was formed to monitor the effects of education reform, particularly testing, on students at risk for academic failure because of poverty, lack of proficiency in English, disability, or membership in population subgroups that have been educationally disadvantaged. The committee recognizes the important potential benefits of standards-based reforms and of test results in revealing the impact of reform efforts on these students. The committee also recognizes the valuable role graduation tests can potentially play in making requirements concrete, in increasing the value of a diploma, and in motivating students and educators alike to work to higher standards. At the same time, educational testing is a complicated endeavor, that reality can fall far short of the model, and that testing cannot by itself provide the desired benefits. If testing is improperly used, it can have negative effects, such as encouraging school leaving, that can hit disadvantaged students hardest.The committee was concerned that the recent proliferation of high school exit examinations could have the unintended effect of increasing dropout rates among students whose rates are already far higher than the average, and has taken a close look at what is known about influences on dropout behavior and at the available data on dropouts and school completion.

Recollections of unexpected and emotional events (called 'flashbulb' memories) have long been the subject of theoretical speculation. Previous meetings have brought together everyone who has done research on memories of the Challenger explosion, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of flashbulb memories. How do flashbulb memories compare with other kinds of recollections? Are they unusually accurate, or especially long-lived? Do they reflect the activity of a special mechanism, as has been suggested? Although Affect and Accuracy in Recall focuses on flashbulb memories, it addresses more general issues of affect and accuracy. Do emotion and arousal strengthen memory? If so, under what conditions? By what physiological mechanisms? This 1993 volume is evidence of progress made in memory research since Brown and Kulick's 1977 paper.

This book brings different ideas to bear on the classical problem of the self. Self-perception, both ecological and social, is the earliest and most fundamental form of self-knowledge. In his introduction, Ulric Neisser describes the 'ecological self' as based on direct and realistic perception of one's situation in the environment; the 'interpersonal self' as established by social interaction with other people. He argues that both of these 'selves' appear in early infancy, long before anything like a self-concept or a self-narrative is possible. In subsequent chapters, fifteen contributors - psychologists, philosophers and others - elaborate on these notions and introduce related ideas of their own. Their topics range from the perceptual and social development of infants to autism and blindness; from mechanisms of motor control to dance and non-verbal communication. The combined contributions of these leading individuals creates an unusual synthesis of perceptual, social and developmental theory.

This book brings a surprisingly wide range of intellectual disciplines to bear on the self-narrative and the self. The same ecological/cognitive approach that successfully organized Ulric Neisser's earlier volume on The Perceived Self now relates ideas from the experimental, developmental, and clinical study of memory to insights from post-modernism and literature. Although autobiographical remembering is an essential way of giving meaning to our lives, the memories we construct are never fully consistent and often simply wrong. In the first chapter, Neisser considers the so-called 'false memory syndrome' in this context; other contributors discuss the effects of amnesia, the development of remembering in childhood, the social construction of memory and its alleged self-servingness, and the contrast between literary and psychological models of the self. Jerome Bruner, Peggy Miller, Alan Baddeley, Kenneth Gergen and Daniel Albright are among the contributors to this unusual synthesis.

What is the self-concept and how does it develop? Do people in different cultures have sharply different concepts of self? Can we believe what our informants tell us on this point? What is known about the self-concepts of depressives? of schizophrenics? How does meditation affect the sense of self? Is there an inner 'self of selves' as James once suggested? These are, of course, hotly debated questions in the social sciences. In this book a prestigious group of psychologists, linguists, anthropologists and philosophers addresses these questions and presents some surprising answers. This is the third and last of the Emory Symposia organized around Ulric Neisser's cognitive theory of self-knowledge, it goes beyond The Perceived Self and The Remembering Self to deal with psychological and philosophical questions surrounding the self.

In Remembering Reconsidered, the new ecologically oriented study of memory makes contact with more traditional approaches. The emerging result may be what several of the authors have begun to call 'functionalism': a concern with the adaptive significance of memory in ordinary life coupled with a careful analysis of the variables on which it depends. In different ways, the chapters reflect this concern. The editors bring together a diverse collection of studies on remembering, using subjects ranging from folk songs to 'crib talk'. Introductory chapters weave these themes together, developing an underlying sense of the project of the volume as a whole. This is the second volume in the Emory Symposia on Cognition. The Emory Cognition Project, directed by Ulric Neisser, emphasizes an ecological approach to problems in theoretical, experimental, and applied cognitive psychology.

Categories straddle the boundary between the mind and the world: they are socially developed mental representations, but they must fit the properties of real objects in the real environment if they are to be useful. Concepts and Conceptual Development reflects the view that a full understanding of categorization must take all these constraints into account. Everyday terms and categories depend not only on the implicit theories that people have about the world (their 'idealised cognitive models'), but also on the objective properties of particular objects and the perceptible similarities among these objects. An understanding of these multiple relationships can reshape studies of concepts and conceptual development. Concepts and Conceptual Development draws together theorists from a wide range of theoretical orientations to consider many different aspects of 'the psychology of concepts'.

Recollections of unexpected and emotional events (called 'flashbulb' memories) have long been the subject of theoretical speculation. Previous meetings have brought together everyone who has done research on memories of the Challenger explosion, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of flashbulb memories. How do flashbulb memories compare with other kinds of recollections? Are they unusually accurate, or especially long-lived? Do they reflect the activity of a special mechanism, as has been suggested? Although Affect and Accuracy in Recall focuses on flashbulb memories, it addresses more general issues of affect and accuracy. Do emotion and arousal strengthen memory? If so, under what conditions? By what physiological mechanisms? This 1993 volume is evidence of progress made in memory research since Brown and Kulick's 1977 paper.

This book brings different ideas to bear on the classical problem of the self. Self-perception, both ecological and social, is the earliest and most fundamental form of self-knowledge. In his introduction, Ulric Neisser describes the 'ecological self' as based on direct and realistic perception of one's situation in the environment; the 'interpersonal self' as established by social interaction with other people. He argues that both of these 'selves' appear in early infancy, long before anything like a self-concept or a self-narrative is possible. In subsequent chapters, fifteen contributors - psychologists, philosophers and others - elaborate on these notions and introduce related ideas of their own. Their topics range from the perceptual and social development of infants to autism and blindness; from mechanisms of motor control to dance and non-verbal communication. The combined contributions of these leading individuals creates an unusual synthesis of perceptual, social and developmental theory.

This book brings a surprisingly wide range of intellectual disciplines to bear on the self-narrative and the self. The same ecological/cognitive approach that successfully organized Ulric Neisser's earlier volume on The Perceived Self now relates ideas from the experimental, developmental, and clinical study of memory to insights from post-modernism and literature. Although autobiographical remembering is an essential way of giving meaning to our lives, the memories we construct are never fully consistent and often simply wrong. In the first chapter, Neisser considers the so-called 'false memory syndrome' in this context; other contributors discuss the effects of amnesia, the development of remembering in childhood, the social construction of memory and its alleged self-servingness, and the contrast between literary and psychological models of the self. Jerome Bruner, Peggy Miller, Alan Baddeley, Kenneth Gergen and Daniel Albright are among the contributors to this unusual synthesis.

What is the self-concept and how does it develop? Do people in different cultures have sharply different concepts of self? Can we believe what our informants tell us on this point? What is known about the self-concepts of depressives? of schizophrenics? How does meditation affect the sense of self? Is there an inner 'self of selves' as James once suggested? These are, of course, hotly debated questions in the social sciences. In this book a prestigious group of psychologists, linguists, anthropologists and philosophers addresses these questions and presents some surprising answers. This is the third and last of the Emory Symposia organized around Ulric Neisser's cognitive theory of self-knowledge, it goes beyond The Perceived Self and The Remembering Self to deal with psychological and philosophical questions surrounding the self.

In Remembering Reconsidered, the new ecologically oriented study of memory makes contact with more traditional approaches. The emerging result may be what several of the authors have begun to call 'functionalism': a concern with the adaptive significance of memory in ordinary life coupled with a careful analysis of the variables on which it depends. In different ways, the chapters reflect this concern. The editors bring together a diverse collection of studies on remembering, using subjects ranging from folk songs to 'crib talk'. Introductory chapters weave these themes together, developing an underlying sense of the project of the volume as a whole. This is the second volume in the Emory Symposia on Cognition. The Emory Cognition Project, directed by Ulric Neisser, emphasizes an ecological approach to problems in theoretical, experimental, and applied cognitive psychology.

Lower school achievement of minority children is usually explained by projecting "deficits" upon the children -- deficits that are attributed to genetic or environmental causes. In contrast with tradition, the contributors to this book demonstrate how group differences in academic accomplishment and test scores are affected by cultural factors and standard educational practices as well.

First published in 1967, this seminal volume by Ulric Neisser was the first attempt at a comprehensive and accessible survey of Cognitive Psychology; as such, it provided the field with its first true textbook.Its chapters are organized so that they began with stimulus information that came 'inward' through the organs of sense, through its many transformations and reconstructions, and finally through to its eventual use in thought and memory.The volume inspired numerous students enter the field of cognitive psychology and some of the today's leading and most respected cognitive psychologists cite Neisser's book as the reason they embarked on their careers.