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This textbook offers a foundational overview of cognitive psychology, balancing accessible writing, practical applications, and research. By incorporating biological perspectives throughout, the authors provide a concise introduction to human cognition and its evolution over time as a means of adapting to our environment. Chapters cover key topics including cognitive neuroscience, attention and consciousness, perception, memory, knowledge representation, language, problem-solving and creativity, decision-making and reasoning, cognitive development, and intelligence. This seventh edition also introduces new content on human intelligence, consolidated into a final chapter. With its 'from lab to life' approach, the authors provide thorough coverage of theory, lab, and field research, while continually highlighting real-world applications to everyday life.
How can we advance our understanding of emotion through a socio-cultural lens? How do we overcome decade-long debates on universality versus culture-specificity? This book engages with these challenges by documenting rich empirical evidence of similarity as well as cultural variation in how emotions are conceptualised, experienced, expressed, and regulated. Examples include how emotions unfold in romantic relationships and are linked to well-being and distress. With nuance and rigour, it includes diverse theoretical and methodological approaches and examples on numerous specific emotions across varied cultural contexts. The volume also explores how culture–emotion dynamics unfold in multicultural societies, shedding light on emotional acculturation, intergroup relations, and macro-level cultural change under societal threat. Bringing together leading experts worldwide, each chapter outlines promising directions for future research, inviting scholars, practitioners and students across cultural psychology, clinical science, applied linguistics, and relationship research to reimagine emotion as a culturally embedded and socially enacted phenomenon.
This book presents a groundbreaking exploration of humanity's quest for altered states, from ancient psychoactive rituals to immersive AI and virtual reality, and examines their continued impact on cognition, culture, governance, and identity. Drawing on decades of global fieldwork and interdisciplinary research, Dr Sheldon Lee Gosline traces compelling connections between the regulation of controlled substances and the addictive dynamics of emerging technologies. Readers are challenged to move beyond binaries of legality and pathology and discover how symbols, rituals, and imagination have long mediated our understanding of self and reality. Bridging anthropology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the history of medicine, chapters introduce innovative concepts such as symbolic entropy and recursive regulation to interpret present crises and anticipate future transformations. A must-read for scholars, policymakers, and curious readers alike, the volume offers a powerful lens through which to understand the evolving future of consciousness in the digital age.
Online education, smartphones, and generative AI have dramatically changed what and how we read. Amid this backdrop of changing media and habits, this book addresses the question: What do we know about the cognitive benefits of reading? And how might this change in a digital age? Presenting a synthesis of research spanning psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and education, it offers a clear and accessible account of how reading transforms the human mind and brain. It demonstrates the profound cognitive enhancements on memory, attention, language processing, reasoning, and intellectual growth resulting from reading, beyond knowledge acquisition. This is an essential guide for students, educators, and researchers alike interested in the science of reading.
The Cambridge Handbook of Behavioural Data Science offers an essential exploration of how behavioural science and data science converge to study, predict, and explain human, algorithmic, and systemic behaviours. Bringing together scholars from psychology, economics, computer science, engineering, and philosophy, the Handbook presents interdisciplinary perspectives on emerging methods, ethical dilemmas, and real-world applications. Organised into modular parts-Human Behaviour, Algorithmic Behaviour, Systems and Culture, and Applications—it provides readers with a comprehensive, flexible map of the field. Covering topics from cognitive modelling to explainable AI, and from social network analysis to ethics of large language models, the Handbook reflects on both technical innovations and the societal impact of behavioural data, and reinforces concepts in online supplementary materials and videos. The book is an indispensable resource for researchers, students, practitioners, and policymakers who seek to engage critically and constructively with behavioural data in an increasingly digital and algorithmically mediated world.
Causality extends across many areas of psychiatry, from the purely conceptual and philosophical to the interpretation of genetic, epidemiological, and neurobiological work. This book offers new, interdisciplinary perspectives on causation in psychopathology, exploring it in relation to the latest scientific and philosophical advances, as well as through psychiatric research and practice. It features contributions from many internationally known psychologists, clinical researchers, and philosophers of science actively studying the phenomenology of mental illness. The chapters are organized into four sections: The Causes Themselves; Causes, Genes, and Neuroscience; Causality and Nosology; and Causality and Phenomenology. Each main chapter is preceded by a brief introduction written by the editors and a commentary by another author in this volume. By taking a multidisciplinary approach spanning psychiatry, philosophy, and psychology, the book is written to be accessible for members of all three disciplines.
What is language, really? Where did it come from, and how did we figure it out? How do babies go from babbling to full sentences? Why can some people juggle multiple languages, while others wrestle with one? How does language work, and what happens when it doesn't? With sharp insight and a sense of humor, Stollznow dives into the strange and endlessly fascinating world of language and the mind. From animal communication to AI, wild children to word slips, and first words to last, this book takes you deep into the science of psycholinguistics, where nothing is ever simple, and everything speaks volumes. Packed with pop culture, real-life cases, and eye-opening experiments, Beyond Words reveals how we learn, use, and lose language, and what it all says about being human. If you've ever fumbled for a word or feared forgetting your own name, this thoughtful, surprising book is for you.
Drawing on decades of expertise alongside a large dataset of assessment results, this book offers an integrated, lifespan perspective on dyslexia and its lasting effects. It reframes dyslexia as an information processing difficulty, with working memory weakness at its core, leading to cognitive overload in learning, work, and everyday life. Aimed at individuals with dyslexia as well as educators, coaches, counsellors, and career advisors, the authors provide practical, evidence-based recommendations for managing associated challenges with a particular focus on strategy development and the use of assistive technology. Bridging neuroscience, cognitive psychology and educational psychology, the text promotes scientific understanding of dyslexia in all its manifestations.
This book presents a compelling, science-based guide for navigating life's many transitions: from first jobs to midlife pivots to purposeful retirements. Based on insights from over 1000 people across all ages and career stages, it blends identity work, prototyping, and psychological capital to foster sustainable, purpose-driven career paths. Drawing on design thinking, positive psychology, and behavioral science, each chapter encourages reflection, exploration, and growth, supported by a practical toolkit featuring methods such as the Magic Circle, Life Loops, and the Stairway to Heaven. Readers are equipped to overcome procrastination, redesign habits, explore bold dreams, and build a portfolio life that reflects personal evolution. Whether you're feeling stuck, restless, or ready for something new, Design Your Future will help you take action with confidence and joy. This book is not about making the perfect plan; it's about designing your next brave step.
Friendship is a critically important aspect of our lives, but is it always an unassailably 'good thing'? This book begins with the innovative premise that friendship is inherently complex and characterized by opposing qualities: it is both pleasurable and fraught, private and public, and inclusive and exclusionary. Rather than simply celebrating friendship as universally beneficial or worrying about its decline amid rising social disconnection, Laura Eramian and Peter Mallory offer a comprehensive conceptualization of 'critical friendship' across its diverse meanings. Drawing on contemporary insights and cross-cultural examples from interdisciplinary contributors, the chapters examine the ambivalence of friendship, its entanglements with other relations or institutions, the quest for selfhood and recognition, and how friendship finds meaning across private and public life. Through an empirically rich evaluation of the multiple ways that friendship is practiced, valued, or interpreted, this volume advances critical debates on friendship across social psychology, anthropology, sociology and beyond.
Knowledge-infused learning directly confronts the opacity of current 'black-box' AI models by combining data-driven machine learning techniques with the structured insights of symbolic AI. This guidebook introduces the pioneering techniques of neurosymbolic AI, which blends statistical models with symbolic knowledge to make AI safer and user-explainable. This is critical in high-stakes AI applications in healthcare, law, finance, and crisis management. The book brings readers up to speed on advancements in statistical AI, including transformer models such as BERT and GPT, and provides a comprehensive overview of weakly supervised, distantly supervised, and unsupervised learning methods alongside their knowledge-enhanced variants. Other topics include active learning, zero-shot learning, and model fusion. Beyond theory, the book presents practical considerations and applications of neurosymbolic AI in conversational systems, mental health, crisis management systems, and social and behavioral sciences, making it a pragmatic reference for AI system designers in academia and industry.
Girls are facing growing pressures that impact their self-esteem, whilst the pandemic and dominance of social media have made it even more challenging for girls to feel good about their bodies. Dr. Charlotte Markey provides girls aged 9–15 with the tools they need to understand, accept, and appreciate their bodies. She provides all the facts on puberty, mental health, self-care, why diets are bad news, dealing with social media, and everything in-between. Girls will find answers to questions they always wanted to ask, the truth behind many body image myths, advice and inspiration from experts, and real-life stories from girls who share their own experiences. Through this updated and beautifully illustrated guide, Dr. Markey teaches girls how to nurture both mental and physical health to improve their own body image, shows the positive impact they can have on others, and empowers them to go out into the world feeling fearless!
Across the world, most people are religious or spiritual, and many have a strong relational-emotional bond (attachment relationship) with God(s). This Element summarizes social-scientific theory and research on these relationships. Part I outlines basic principles of attachment and religion/spirituality. Part II describes normative (human-universal) processes and patterns. It explains how God and other supernatural beings often serve as irreplaceable relational caregivers (attachment figures), safe havens, and secure bases for people. Then it examines how religious/spiritual development interacts with attachment maturation across the lifespan. Part III explores individual differences in human and religious/spiritual attachment. After describing human-attachment differences, it examines how such differences can manifest jointly in forms of emotionally/socially correspondent or emotionally compensatory human attachment and religion/spirituality. Part IV discusses applied theory and research on religious/spiritual attachment. It explores the relationship between religious/spiritual attachment and health/well-being and concludes discussing how transformation in religious/spiritual attachment can occur through psychospiritual intervention or healthy relationships.
This book presents an interdisciplinary survey at the intersection of music, creativity, and medicine. Featuring contributions from medical doctors, psychologists, and musicians, it surveys thought-provoking findings in the music-medical borderlands. Experts in neuroscience explore the cerebral underpinnings of music, from auditory-motor interactions, to rhythm, to the role of music in therapy, epilepsy, and cognitive disorders. Case studies describe medical biographies of musical masters, including Beethoven's deafness, Schumann's deterioration, Ravel's dementia, and Gershwin's brain tumor. There are accompanying studio recordings from the volume editors. Students, researchers, or anyone interested in the new frontiers of music in medicine will find original cross-disciplinary connections in this volume.
In the evolving landscape of psychological research and communication, The Psychologist's Companion, stands as the definitive guide supporting students, young professionals, and researchers in psychology at all stages of their careers. This seventh edition presents new and updated chapters covering a wide range of topics essential for success in psychology, including planning and writing research papers, presenting data effectively, evaluating one's own work, writing grant proposals, giving talks and presentations, finding a book publisher, navigating job interviews, and more! Serving as an invaluable resource for improving both written and oral communication skills in academic psychology, the content is structured as a step-by-step manual focusing on practical skills and contemporary issues. It guides readers through various tasks encountered during psychological research and academic life. Whether you're crafting your first paper or seeking to enhance your scholarly impact, this book provides the tools and knowledge to excel in today's competitive academic environment.
Configuring Psychology offers a vibrant, multimodal sociological analysis of clinical psychology as a profession and practice in the UK. Starting from the widely-accepted principle and goal of enhancing access to care, it examines how political, economic, legal, and social dynamics intertwine with clinical norms and expertise. These interactions configure broader healthcare contexts, defining not only entry into therapy but also exclusion from it. Through close attention to policy developments, professional strategies, and psychologists' experiences, Martyn Pickersgill reveals how access reforms shape clinical knowledge, therapeutic practice, and understandings of psychology itself. He shows how expanding access has become both a moral imperative and a managerial project, with clinical psychologists balancing competing bureaucratic, ethical, and emotional demands in an increasingly strained NHS. As such, Configuring Psychology provides essential insights for social scientists as well as clinicians and policymakers navigating reform. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Specialised perinatal mental health services are crucial in providing the best care for women and their families. An essential guide to perinatal psychiatry, this comprehensive resource is a must-have for psychiatric trainees, consultants, and mental health teams. Written by experts in the specialty, this book fills a critical gap in the field by addressing the specific needs of women during pregnancy and the postnatal period, their infants and families. Covering topics from normal development to rare syndromes, theoretical perspectives to cutting-edge treatments, it offers a thorough overview of perinatal psychiatry, ensuring that clinicians are well-prepared to provide comprehensive care to women and families in need. Part of The College Seminars series, and directly mapped to the MRCPsych curriculum, this book is a key resource for psychiatric trainees.
This book explores groundbreaking scientific perspectives on mind and brain, challenging traditional models that view cognition solely through the lens of computation. Featuring contributions from leading thinkers across behavioral sciences, cognitive sciences, philosophy of mind, psychology, and neurosciences, it highlights innovative approaches that emphasize the dynamic interplay of perception, action, and adaptation in an ever-changing world. Readers will discover cutting-edge research on how brains, bodies, and environments are interconnected, and how this interconnectedness drives organismal adaptability, creativity, and resilience. From the role of embodied cognition to the importance of social and environmental contexts, this book offers a comprehensive survey of emerging theories that redefine how we understand mind and behavior. Accessible yet thought-provoking, this volume is essential for those curious about how modern science is reshaping our understanding of cognition, from researchers and students to readers seeking fresh insights into how we navigate our complex, dynamic world.
Pointing is a fundamental gesture that connects individuals with their social and physical worlds. Whether communicating information about the external environment or serving to clarify to whom or what someone is referring, pointing may appear to be a uniquely human and universal action. However, it develops in varied social and cultural contexts, and even some nonhuman species point and can understand pointing cues. While there has been substantial research on the cultural, developmental, and evolutionary aspects of pointing, these perspectives remain fragmented. This book bridges this gap by bringing together leading scholars from cognitive psychology, evolutionary anthropology and biology, animal behavior, developmental psychology, and comparative psychology to synthesize current findings, highlight emerging directions, and provide students and researchers with a comprehensive view of the field.
Words are among the basic building blocks of language, allowing us to share a tremendous range of ideas. This book summarizes research on how words are represented, organized, and processed in our brain, offering a fascinating window into the neural basis of language. It begins with a foundational overview of linguistics and neuroscience, including neurons, networks and functional areas. It then delves into key topics and theories. It explores such questions as How do the meanings of words for objects and events relate to the brain regions involved in perception and action? Are different semantic categories of words, like those for animals and tools, segregated in the brain? What are the neural substrates of abstract words? The book describes how different theories answer these questions, and how numerous experiments help adjudicate between them. It also includes learning objectives, chapter summaries, and over 60 figures.