Advances in Psychology – serie

The volume is divided into three parts. Fundamental aspects of mental models are presented in the first section, the following part contains contributions to the function of mental models in discourse processing, and finally problems of mental models in reasoning and problem solving are outlined.

The themes of the book are highly topical. There is a growing interest in studies both with healthy persons and with patients that focus on localization errors and dissociations in localizations resulting from different tasks. These errors lead to new concepts of how visual space is represented. Such deviations are not only observed in the spatial domain but in the temporal domain as well. Typical examples are errors in duration judgments or synchronization errors in tapping tasks. In addition, several studies indicate the influence of attention on both the timing and on the localization of dynamic events. Another intriguing question originates from well-known interactions between intermodal events, namely, whether these events are based on a single representation or whether different representations interact.

Over the last decade there has been a spate of research on the empirical phenomenon known as "attentional capture". Interest in capture can be attributed not only to its applied significance, but also to the implications of the phenomenon for theories of selective attention, as well as cognitive control in general. This growing interest, however, has also spawned a wide variety of experimental paradigms, empirical results, and theoretical perspectives. In June of 2000, 40 experimental psychologists converged on Villanova University for a conference and workshop on attentional capture. The intent was to provide an intimate forum for scientists from diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and using diverse methodologies to present their research on attentional capture and also engage in small group discussions on such key issues as the definition, measurement, and theoretical treatment of attention capture. This book presents a collection of chapters based on those presentations and discussions. Chapters are organized around areas such as neuroscience, visual cognition, developmental, individual differences and dynamical systems. The volume provides: a summary of the latest cutting edge research; an important compass for future research in this area; a useful survey of the field; contributions from internationally recognized experts in attention. Due to its exclusive focus on the topic of attentional capture the volume should make an excellent supplemental text or reference book for advanced undergraduate or graduate seminars in cognitive psychology and attention.

Reversal Theory is a new general theory of motivation, emotion, personality, psychopathology and stress which challenges previous ideas in these fields and sets up an unusually broad and integrative conceptual framework of its own.

The papers in the six sections which make up this volume are concerned with: - developing the theory itself - looking at different research areas, or psychological problems, from the perspective of reversal theory - describing empirical studies of different kinds aimed at testing ideas drawn from the theory.

Appendices provide the complete anatomy of the upper limb, the basics of computational modelling, and the fundamentals of prosthetic and dextrous robot hands. The ultimate goal of this book is to develop a common vocabularly for multidisciplinary researchers who strive to understand a system as complex as the hand under the control of the human brain.

The book concentrates on age differences in word and language processing, because these factors relate to reading which is a critical cognitive process used in everyday life. Furthermore, age differences in word and language processing illustrate the importance of taking component cognitive processes into consideration. The breadth of coverage of the book attests to the wide range of cognitive processes involved in word and language processing.

The comprehension of graphics is not only a stimulating topic in the fields of science and instructional psychology, but also in related disciplines such as semiotics, and artificial intelligence. Research on the comprehension of graphics complements the scientific investigation of cognitive processes in text comprehension, which has contributed much to our understanding of human cognition and learning. Ultimately, a better understanding of the cognitive processes involved in the comprehension of graphics will have an impact not only on cognitive theory, but also on educational practice.

This book is a collection of current theoretical views and research on the self in early infancy, prior to self-identification and the well-documented emergence of mirror self-recognition. The focus is on the early sense of self of the young infant. Its aim is to provide an account of recent research substantiating the precursors of self-recognition and self-identification. By concentrating on early infancy, the book provides an updated look at the origins of self-knowledge.

The impasse concerns a presupposition concerning the nature of representation - that all representation has the nature of encodings: encodingism. Encodings certainly exist, butencodingism is at root logically incoherent; any programmatic research predicted on it is doomed too distortion and ultimate failure.

The impasse and its consequences - and steps away from that impasse - are explored in a large number of projects and approaches. These include SOAR, CYC, PDP, situated cognition, subsumption architecture robotics, and the frame problems - a general survey of the current research in AI and Cognitive Science emerges.

Interactivism, an alternative model of representation, is proposed and examined.

The aggregation of studies from different perspectives is often fascinating, especially when the same field can serve as a common ground between researchers. Nearly all contributors to this book work on sensory-motor aging; they represent a large range of affiliations and backgrounds including psychology, neurobiology, cognitive sciences, kinesiology, neuropsychology, neuropharmacology, motor performance, physical therapy, exercise science, and human development. Addressing age-related behavioral changes can also furnish some crucial reflections in the debate about motor coordination: aging is the product of both maturational and environmental processes, and studies on aging must determine how the intricate interrelationships between these processes evolve. The study of aging makes it possible to determine how compensatory mechanisms, operating on different subsystems and each aging at its own rate, compensate for biological degenerations and changing external demands. This volume will contribute to demonstrating that the study of the aging process raises important theoretical questions.

This book aims to give an integrative approach of time sense and to focus the analysis on temporal factors in the processing of movement, trying to link temporal perception studies in the final common pathway, that is motion. To give some clues of human brain integrative processes at higher levels. And, finally, to clarify the neurophysiological substrate of these operations.

. How and why constructs that have their origins in human mental life are embodied in physical environments when people fabricate their habitat, even to the point of those constructs becoming that very habitat

. How and why these fabricated habitats affect, and feed back into, human mental life.

The aim of the CT research programme is to determine, in general, which technologies, and in particular, which interactive computer-based technologies, are humane with respect to the cognitive development and evolutionary adaptation of their end users. But what does it really mean to be humane in a technological world? To shed light on this central issue other pertinent questions are raised, e.g.

. Why are human minds externalised, i.e., what purpose does the process of externalisation serve?

. What can we learn about the human mind by studying how it externalises itself?

. How does the use of externalised mental constructs (the objects we call 'tools') change people fundamentally?

. To what extent does human interaction with technology serve as an amplification of human cognition, and to what extent does it lead to a atrophy of the human mind?

The book calls for a reflection on what a tool is. Strong parallels between CT and environmentalism are drawn: both are seen as trends having originated in our need to understand how we manipulate, by means of the tools we have created, our natural habitat consisting of, on the one hand, the cognitive environment which generates thought and determines action, and on the other hand, the physical environment in which thought and action are realised. Both trends endeavour to protect the human habitat from the unwanted or uncontrolled impact of technology, and are ultimately concerned with the ethics and aesthetics of tool design and tool use.

Among the topics selected by the contributors to the book, the following themes emerge (the list is not exhaustive): using technology to empower the cognitively impaired; the ethics versus aesthetics of technology; the externalisation of emotive and affective life and its special dialectic ('mirror') effects; creativity enhancement: cognitive space, problem tractability; externalisation of sensory life and mental imagery; the engineering and modelling aspects of externalised life; externalised communication channels and inner dialogue; externalised learning protocols; relevance analysis as a theoretical framework for cognitive technology.

The book is divided into three parts, each characterized by a slightly different focus: in part I, the major theme concerns computational maps which typically model cortical areas, according to a view of the sensorimotor cortex as "geometric engine" and the site of "internal models" of external spaces. Part II also addresses problems of self-organization and field computing, but in a simpler computational architecture which, although lacking a specialized cortical machinery, can still behave in a very adaptive and surprising way by exploiting the interaction with the real world. Finally part III is focused on the motor control issues related to the physical properties of muscular actuators and the dynamic interactions with the world.

The reader will find different approaches on controversial issues, such as the role and nature of force fields, the need for internal representations, the nature of invariant commands, the vexing question about coordinate transformations, the distinction between hierachiacal and bi-directional modelling, and the influence of muscle stiffness.