Advances in Psychology Series

From the human brain, event related potentials (ERPs) can be obtained which reflect psychological information processing. This book summarizes the theoretical and methodological aspects of research on the so-called ``endogenous'' components of the ERP. These components are invoked by psychological processing rather than evoked by the mere presentations of external stimuli.

Is there a `right way' to study coordination? What experimental paradigms are appropriate? Are there laws and principles that the biological system uses to coordinate movement? Do all biological systems - human and otherwise - share these same principles? Is coordination inherited or acquired? Is it a central nervous system, muscular, or mechanical problem? Indeed, what is coordination and how can it be quantified? This volume attempts to help to answer some of these questions by bringing together a collection of conceptual approaches to and empirical investigations of the coordination of movement. The authors of the chapters are well known and respected researchers from a variety of disciplines. New theoretical developments such as in synergetics and dynamic pattern formation are presented together with extensive reviews and new experimental work on infant motor behavior, and the coordination of prehension, multi-limb, gait and speech movement. The volume contains perspectives on the problem of movement coordination relevant to various disciplines such as psychology, biology, engineering and robotics, physical education, physical therapy, kinesiology and physiology and so will be of interest to all students and scientists working in such fields.

Letter and Word Perception

Cognition and Memory

This book contains a number of chapters on the control and execution of skilled movements, as well as more general chapters on theoretical issues in skilled performance. The contributors have summarised their most recent research, and general themes and issues are presented in discussion chapters at the end of each section, thus providing a good general summary of the kind of research and theoretical frameworks developing in this area. The first section is concerned with the theoretical issues of programming and co-ordination. Issues raised in the second section are basic to much of the research reviewed in the volume. This section summarises the various theoretical positions in the recent debates on the role of cognitive processes in motor control and the usefulness of the ``psychomotor'' approach, and contains chapters based on individual papers which present relevant empirical findings. The third section deals with the learning and performance of skilled movements, containing papers with practical implications for everyday skills. The final section contains chapters on cognitive processes in skilled performance.

The volume applies to the study of the motor system the computational approach developed by David Marr for the visual system. Accordingly, understanding movement is viewed as an information processing problem, centred on the representation of appropriate computational structures. In particular, the book deals with the representation of objects, concurrent parallel processes, trajectory formation patterns and patterns of interaction with the environment. A number of modeling techniques are discussed, ranging from computational geometry to artificial intelligence, integrating very different aspects of movement, especially those which are not directly motoric.

Examining selected statistical and modeling approaches in psychology, the book concentrates on the topics of mental test theory and theory of measurement. The main objective is not only to present a critical view of the approaches suggested up until now, but also their reinterpretation, extension and enrichment by new theories and concepts, for example, formal theories of semiotics and knowledge, and a unifying theory of actions. The book also shows a relation between test theory and the foundations of fuzzy set theory. It presents new models of measurement tools and new measurement theories of concepts such as objective and subjective time, risk or utility, and discusses the cognitive foundations of these theories, namely the theory of perception and observability.

Wilson's book proposes an associationistic form of psychological theory which is opposed to the more extreme structuralist claims. It brings together a relatively novel combination of topics from psychology, computational linguistics and artificial intelligence which support a viable associationistic position.

Research on discourse (or text) processing has only recently come into its own. It builds on the work of text analysis which has a long and distinguished history, but modern developments in psychology (e.g. memory research), artificial intelligence, linguistics and philosophy have contributed to this emergence in the last decade as a lively and promising research area. This book contains 46 selected and edited contributions from the International Symposium held in Fribourg in 1981, and represents a truly international overview of the developments in research on written and oral discourse. The contributions have been grouped according to problem area and not according to methodology, with the intention of focusing on the important issues in the field of discourse processing and of showing how diverse approaches contribute to a better understanding of the problems involved. The main themes are: text structure, coherence, inference, memory processes, attention and control, goal perspectives, and educational implications.

A comprehensive view of coalition formation is presented here. Each of the chapters gives a summary of theories and research findings in a specific field of interest, at various levels of human and primate organisation.

Language and Comprehension

This volume is the outcome of an international symposium held in Berlin, FRG, which brought together researchers in the field of infant development. The contributors are from Europe and North America, and have as their primary professional interest either pediatrics, biology or psychology. These fields, in spite of common involvement and large overlap, still have to overcome communication problems and differences in scientific approaches. The emphasis of this book is on the efforts of the participants towards reaching a mutual understanding. In spite of disciplinary diversity, the papers in this book complement each other, and set the scene for future multidisciplinary research and exchange in the field of infant development.

Presenting a philosophical and psychological overview of the history of the concept of intelligence, this controversial text does not aim to supply yet another opinion on, or interpretation of the concept of intelligence, but rather attempts to find out how to approach this concept on a scientific level.

The contributors to this book are all distinguished, internationally-known specialists working in the motor control and learning area. The result is a unique collection of papers that discuss many aspects of this intricate and diverse subject and at the same time manage to provide the reader with a good overview of the major topics.

Contributed chapters by psychologists and behavioral biologists provide a broad coverage of animal behavior, and governing brain processes. Topics covered include: foraging behavior and strategies, economics and psychology, memory of events and space, time perception, expectancies, food preferences and diet selection, behavior variability and the concept of mind. The volume is designed to satisfy an intderdisciplinary audience, embracing the behavioristic tradition, biological and physiological approaches, and evolutionary theory as philosophical underpinnings to the chapters. Also achieved in this work is a good balance between empirical results and theory.

The book deals with two focal issues: 1. The structural rules according to which information is organized in perception (Part I). 2. The rules on how pieces of information are integrated and transformed into judgements (Part II). Included in Part I are theories on neural mechanisms and models linking perception and memory. Part II refers to simple physical and complex semantic dimensions. Antecedents in animal behaviour are explored too. The book is intended for a broad readership; it should stimulate research which will link topics that have been traditionally separated. Features of the book are: - a synopsis of discrete, structural and quantitative aspects of perception linking perception with higher cognition and memory. - an overview on new approaches and findings from East and West on perceptual organization and rules inherent to judgement. - the chapters are strongly interconnected and didactical in tone. Introductions are designed to increase readability of the work.

Discussing (from various viewpoints) problems in theory building and theory evaluation, this book starts from the assumption that theories of development are particular ways of defining the concept of psychological development in terms of a specific conceptual framework, as well as in terms of a specific empirical range (nature of the explained phenomena, prototypical experiments and applications, etc.). The first three parts deal with basic problems in modern developmental psychology, namely ways of describing development and how they direct theory formation; causes and conditions of development in relation with learning and the problem of precursors; and the individual and the socio-cultural dimension in theory building. The fourth part demonstrates three different forms of theory building, while the final part deals with an old philosophical problem in developmental psychology, the rationalism-empiricism controversy.

This volume comprises a selection of the papers presented at the 14th European Mathematical Psychology Group Meeting, held in Brussels, and three invited lectures. Presented are results and developments in mathematical psychology, especially in the theory of perception and learning, order and measurement, and data analysis.

Theory and data on various aspects of cognition, communication and handicap are presented here, related to two sorts of psychological compensation. On the one hand, basic principles of cognition are employed with the purpose of helping to overcome communicative difficulties among handicapped people, and on the other, various sorts of technical aids used for compensatory purposes are examined. Many of the papers presented here stem from a conference held in Stockholm in 1985, sponsored by the Swedish Council for the Planning and Coordination of Research, as part of a large-scale project on handicaps. Although researchers in psychology were in the majority, students of other disciplines also took part.

Graphonomics is the newly created term for the science of handwriting and other graphic skills. The Second International Conference on the Neural and Motor Aspects of Handwriting attracted contributions from experimental psychologists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, linguists, biophysicists, and computer scientists from 12 countries. This volume, the proceedings of the conference, features clinical studies of the neural basis of agraphia and dysgraphia from brain-damaged patients. The motor aspects of handwriting are further extended to new areas of interests. Research on handwriting in the English, Chinese and Japanese languages forms the first attempt in the field to investigate handwriting from the psycholinguistic perspective of different languages.

This book reviews progress and describes original research in the cognitive psychology of the arts. The invited contributors are leading authorities, and the topics which they cover include psychological approaches to symbols and meaning in art, issues in experimental aesthetics, the development in children of artistic production and appreciation, and the perception of musical and pictorial material.

The 32 main papers, taken together, provide a comprehensive review of speech research by scientists who have made leading contributions to our understanding of the topics discussed. The papers are assembled within a coherent, problem-oriented structure.

This book contains an edited selection of papers presented at the Eighth Research Conference on Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making, held in Budapest. Together they span a wide range of new developments in studies of decision making, the practice of decision analysis and the development of decision-aiding technology. The volume is arranged in sections: Societal Decision Making; Organizational Decision Making; Aiding the Structuring of Small Scale Decision Problems, and Tracing Decision Processes. The emphasis is on decision processes and structures and their applications, rather than formal modelling in isolation, thus reflecting current developments in research and practice which follow from the understanding of the nature and operation of decision theoretical models gained during the 1970's. The fifth section, A Symposium on the Validity of Studies on Heuristics and Biases, is of a different nature. The papers take stock of the considerable volume of work investigation ``heuristics and biases'' in decision making over the past decade, and their implication for theory and practice.

Under the title The Coordination and Regulation of Movements, an English language version of six of the most important papers of the Russian physiologist Nicholas Bernstein was published in 1967 (Pergamon Press Ltd.). That work has been out of print for some years, but in view of the frequency of its citation in recent works on movement control, a republication was considered desirable. However, since some of the papers in the first edition were written in the 1930's, it was felt that readers' interests would be better served if, after each chapter, an evaluation of the work and, where necessary, an update of the data in the light of more recent findings was included. Contributors of international renown provide such chapters.

Apraxia is a term used to denote a disorder in the performance of limb, verbal and oral non-verbal gestures, with often preserved ability to perform these same gestures outside the clinical setting in the appropriate situation or environment. Over the past century and particularly in the past four decades, a great deal of research has focused on understanding the nature of this complex disorder. This book is a review of current approaches to the study of apraxia and related action sequencing disorders as well as an examination of the mechanisms thought to underly these disorders. Neuropathological processes associated with apraxia are evaluated and principles of motor control, handedness and bimanual coordination are considered as they relate to the study of apractic disorders.

The focus of this book is on stressful experiences and emotional reactions. The common perspective is that self-related cognitions play an important role in describing and explaining the subjective experience of stress, anxiety and depression and the impact on academic performance and social interactions. The assumption of self-related cognitions as mediators in the regulation of one's behavior has a variety of consequences for different fields of applications in psychology.

This volume contains the revised papers of an international symposium on research on fallacies, biases, and the development of decision behavior under uncertainty. The papers are organized in five main sections. The Introduction outlines the conceptual framework and how three of the sections - Cognitive Decision Research, Social Interaction, and Development and Epistemology - are interrelated and also how new fields, such as research into developmental questions, can be productively integrated. In the fifth section Comments are collected, which evaluate the impact of the contributions on decision research itself, and also on cognitive psychology, social psychology, economic theory, ant the discipline of mathematics education.

Spatial Neglect is one of the few areas in Neuropsychology where clinicians, psychologists and animal experimenters have succeeded in adopting a common language. The result of interaction between these three approaches has been some important new advances, which are presented in this volume. Apart from its clinical significance in neuropsychology, Spatial Neglect raises important questions in the field of behavioral neurosciences. In this volume, three aspects are examined: a) normal subjects, where new findings on spatial behavior are described. b) brain-lesioned subjects, where the classical studies on neglect are reconsidered in the light of new findings. c) animals, where new experimental situations allow a deeper understanding of the neural substrate.

Differing Perspectives in Motor Learning, Memory, and Control

The primary purpose of this book is to document the pervasive ramifications of the compositional problem (the discipline's historical inability to define or give a technical specification to psychological phenomena) for the conduction of academic, experimental psychology at five levels of analysis: methodological, epiphenomenal, explanatory, metaphysical, and normative.