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New and Noteworthy
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Edward Zigler, Yale University, Connecticut
Walter S. Gilliam, Yale University, Connecticut
Stephanie M. Jones, Yale University, Connecticut
Decades of research point to the need for a universal preschool education program in the U.S. to help give our nation's children a sound cognitive and social foundation on which to build future educational and life successes. In addition to enhanced school readiness and improved academic performance, participation in high quality preschool programs has been linked with reductions in grade retentions and school drop out rates, and cost savings associated with a diminished need for remedial educational services and justice services. This book brings together nationally renowned experts from the fields of psychology, education, economics and political science to present a compelling case for expanded access to preschool services. They describe the social, educational, and economic benefits for the nation as a whole that may result from the implementation of a universal preschool program in America, and provide guiding principles upon which such a system can best be founded.
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Nel Noddings, Stanford University, California
How can schools prepare students for real life? What should students learn in high school that is rarely addressed today? Critical Lessons recommends sharing highly controversial issues with high school students, including “hot” questions on war, gender, advertising, and religion.
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Harry Daniels, University of Bath
Michael Cole, University of California, San Diego
James V. Wertsch, Washington University, St Louis
L. S. Vygotsky was an early twentieth century Russian social theorist whose writing exerts a significant influence on the development of social theory in the early twenty first century. His non-deterministic, non-reductionist account of the formation of mind provides current theorietical developments with a broadly drawn yet very powerful sketch of the ways in which humans shape and are shaped by social, cultural, and historical conditions. The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky is a comprehensive text that provides students, academics, and practioners with a critical perspective on Vygotsky and his work.
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Lucy Suchman
This book considers how agencies are currently figured at the human-machine interface, and how they might be imaginatively and materially reconfigured. Contrary to the apparent enlivening of objects promised by the sciences of the artificial, the author proposes that the rhetorics and practices of those sciences work to obscure the performative nature of both persons and things. The question then shifts from debates over the status of human-like machines, to that of how humans and machines are enacted as similar or different in practice, and with what theoretical, practical and political consequences. Drawing on recent scholarship across the social sciences, humanities and computing, the author argues for research aimed at tracing the differences within specific sociomaterial arrangements without resorting to essentialist divides. This requires expanding our unit of analysis, while recognizing the inevitable cuts or boundaries through which technological systems are constituted.
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Earl Hunt, University of Washington
Mathematical thinking provides a clear, crisp way of defining problems. Our whole technology is based on it. What is less appreciated is that mathematical thinking can also be applied to problems in the social and behavioral sciences. This book illustrates how mathematics can be used to understand human and animal behavior, using examples in psychology, sociology, economics, ecology, and even marriage counseling.
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George Domino, University of Arizona
Marla L. Domino, University of South Carolina
This book is an introductory text to the field of psychological testing primarily suitable for undergraduate students in psychology, education, business, and related fields. This book will also be of interest to graduate students who have not had a prior exposure to psychological testing and to professionals such as lawyers who need to consult a useful source. Psychological Testing is clearly written, well-organized, comprehensive, and replete with illustrative materials. In addition to the basic topics, the text covers in detail topics that are often neglected by other texts such as cross-cultural testing, the issue of faking tests, the impact of computers and the use of tests to assess positive behaviors such as creativity.
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Alexa Hepburn, Loughborough University
Sally Wiggins, University of Strathclyde
Over the past few decades new ways of conceiving the relation between people, practices and institutions have been developed, enabling an understanding of human conduct in complex situations that is distinctive from traditional psychological and sociological conceptions. This distinctiveness is derived from a sophisticated analytic approach to social action which combines conversation analysis with the fresh treatment of epistemology, mind, cognition and personality developed in discursive psychology. This text is the first to showcase and promote this new method of discursive research in practice. Featuring contributions from a range of international academics, both pioneers in the field and exciting new researchers, this book illustrates an approach to social science issues that cuts across the traditional disciplinary divisions to provide a rich participant-based understanding of action.
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Douwe Draaisma, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
Arnold Pomerans
Erica Pomerans
Is it true, as the novelist Cees Nooteboom once wrote, that memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases? Where do the long, lazy summers of our childhood go? Why, as we grow older, does time seem to condense, speed up and elude us, while in old age, significant events from our distant past can seem as vivid and real as what happened yesterday? Douwe Draaisma, author of the internationally acclaimed Metaphors of Memory (Cambridge, 2001), explores the nature of autobiographical memory. Applying a unique blend of scholarship, poetic sensibility, and keen observation, he tackles such extraordinary phenomena as deja-vu, near-death experiences, the memory feats of idiot savants, and the effects of extreme trauma on memory recall. Raising almost as many questions as it answers, this fascinating book will not fail to affect you at the same time as it educates and entertains. Douwe Draaisma is Professor of the History of Psychology in the Department of Theory and History of Psychology at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He has published books on time and memory and his articles have appeared in professional journals as diverse as Annals of Science, Psychological Medicine, and Nature. The original Dutch version of Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older has won several scientific and literary awards.
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Nick Neave, University of Northumbria, Newcastle
Recent advances in non-invasive sampling techniques have led to an increase in the study of hormones and behaviour. Behaviour is complex but can be explained to a large degree by interactions between various psychological and physiological components, such as the interplay between hormonal and psychological systems. This new textbook from Nick Neave offers a detailed introduction to the fascinating science of behavioural endocrinology from a psychological perspective, examining the relationships between hormones and behaviour in both humans and animals. Neave explains the endocrine system and the ways in which hormones can influence brain structure and function, and presents a series of examples to demonstrate how hormones can influence specific behaviours, including sexual determination and differentiation, neurological differentiation, parental behaviours, aggressive behaviours and cognition. This introductory textbook will appeal to second and third year social science undergraduate students in psychology and biomedicine.
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James R. Flynn, University of Otago, New Zealand
Professor James Flynn is one of the most creative and influential psychologists in the field of intelligence. The 'Flynn Effect' refers to the massive increase in IQ test scores over the course of the twentieth century and the term was coined to recognize Professor Flynn's central role in measuring and analyzing these gains. For over twenty years, psychologists have struggled to understand the implications of IQ gains. Do they mean that each generation is more intelligent than the last? Do they suggest how each of us can enhance our own intelligence? Professor Flynn is finally ready to give his own views. He asks what intelligence really is and gives a surprising and illuminating answer. This book bridges the gulf that separates our minds from those of our ancestors a century ago. It is a fascinating and unique book that makes an important contribution to our understanding of human intelligence.
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Glynis M. Breakwell, University of Bath
Risk surrounds and envelopes us. Without understanding it, we risk everything and without capitalising on it, we gain nothing. This accessible new book from Glynis M. Breakwell comprehensively explores the psychology of risk, examining how individuals think, feel and act, as well as considering the institutional and societal assessments, rhetorics and reactions about risk. Featuring chapters on all the major issues in the psychology of risk including risk assessment, hazard perception, decision-making, risk and crisis management, risk and emotion, risk communication, safety cultures, the social amplification and social representation of risk and mechanisms for changing risk responses, Breakwell uses illustrations and examples to bring to life the significance of her research findings. She provides an innovative overview of current knowledge on the subject but also suggests that there are many fascinating questions still to be answered.
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