Obsessive-compulsive disorder is currently the subject of considerable research, since recent epidemiological studies have suggested that the condition is more prevalent than was originally believed. This book offers a critical discussion of the most important theories that have been put forward to explain this disorder. The book includes behavioural/learning accounts (and cognitive-behavioural supplements of these), based on Pavlovian personality theories (such as those by Eysenck, Gray and Claridge), Pierre Janet's account, cybernetic approaches, psychodynamic approaches, Reed's 'cognitive-structural' account, and biological approaches. Therapeutic approaches to the disorder are also considered, insofar as they are relevant to these theories. This book is unique in both the comprehensiveness and the depth of its coverage of theories of OCD. It also offers an entirely new approach to the definition of the disorder.

It is hard to think of any significant aspect of our lives that is not influenced by what we have learned in the past. Of fundamental importance is our ability to learn the ways in which events are related to one another, called associative learning. This book provides a fresh look at associative learning theory and reviews extensively the advances made over the last twenty years. The Psychology of Associative Learning begins by establishing that the human associative learning system is rational in the sense that it accurately represents event relationships. David Shanks goes on to consider the informational basis of learning, in terms of the memorisation of instances, and discusses at length the application of connectionist models to human learning. The book concludes with an evaluation of the role of rule induction in associative learning. This will be essential reading for graduate students and final year undergraduates of psychology.

Genius: The Natural History of Creativity presents a novel theory of genius and creativity, based on the personality characteristics of creative persons and geniuses. Starting with the fact that genius and creativity are related to psychopathology, it uses modern research into the causes of cognitive over-inclusiveness to suggest possible applications of these theories to creativity. Professor Eysenck reports experimental research to support these theories in their application to creativity, as well as considering the role of intelligence, social status, gender and many other factors that have been linked with genius and creativity. The theory traces creativity from DNA through personality to special cognitive processes to genius.

We live in a world in which inconsistency is the rule rather than the exception and this is particularly true for rewards and frustrations. In some cases, rewards and frustrative non-rewards appear randomly for what seems to be the same behaviour; in others a sequence of rewards is suddenly followed by non-rewards, or large rewards by small rewards. The important common factor in these and other cases is frustration - how we learn about it and how we respond to it. This book provides a basis in learning theory and particularly in frustration theory, for a comprehension not only of the mechanisms controlling these dispositions, but also of their order of appearance in early development and, to an approximation at least, their neural underpinnings.

Latent inhibition is an exquisitely simple, robust and pervasive behavioural phenomenon - the reduced ability of an organism to learn new associations to previously inconsequential stimuli. It has been demonstrated in a variety of animals, including humans, across many different learning tasks. The ease of demonstrating the latent inhibition effect, on the one hand, is matched by the difficulty of incorporating it into contemporary conditioning and learning theories, on the other. R. E. Lubow offers a complete survey of the basic data that comprise the latent inhibition effect and a review of theories that attempt to explain it. He then elaborates his own Conditioned Attention Theory and derives applications for learned helplessness and schizophrenia. A wide range of experimental psychologists and neuroscientists will find this a stimulating and useful book for themselves and their students.

There have been rapid and important advances in all behavioural sciences in recent years. These advances have in one sense been very diverse and specialised - sufficiently so for a scientist to quickly lose touch with the current concerns of even neighbouring researches: but in some cases the developments have seemed also to be fundamental and perhaps convergent, with implications across a range of disciplines. In either case there is a real, and increasing, need for scientists to communicate their discoveries and to a new generation of students in their own. Problems in the Behavioural Sciences is designed to meet this need. The books are by leading researchers, and deal with problems or topics that are attracting a special current interest. The central subject matter is psychology, but many of the issues will need to be pursued across existing (and fluid) boundaries between psychology and other behavioural sciences like physiology, pharmacology, sociology, ethology and linguistics. The central idea of this book is that biology, and particularly evolution, provides the best starting point for the study of emotion. In particular, it is argued that all the conventional properties of emotion such as expression, feeling, and motivation can be considered in a scientific manner, and useful conclusions drawn therefrom. The major part of the book involves the application of this central idea to a wide variety of the phenomena of emotion. The resultant review should be useful as an undergraduate text, and so explanations in the text are aimed at the non-specialist. At the same time, the specific conclusions drawn in the book should be of interest to all those who do research on emotion, and particularly those who need a solid framework on which to base interdisciplinary studies. Biology and Emotion differs from the majority of books in the field in that it does not present a specific theory of emotion. The material covered is therefore more general than is often the case, and has not been selected to support a particular point of view. It combines an organised, yet artheoretical, approach with coverage of both animal and human emotions.

Brain damage can cause memory to break down in a number of different ways, the analysis of which can illuminate how the intact brain mediates memory processes. After first considering the problems involved in assessing memory, this book provisionally advances a taxonomy of elementary memory disorders and, for each in turn, reviews both the specific processes that are disrupted and the lesions responsible for the disruption. These disorders include short-term memory deficits, deficits in previously well-established memory, memory decifits caused by frontal lobe lesions, the organic amnesias, the disorders of conditioning and skill acquisition. Particular attention is paid to the organic amnesias, about which we know the most, and to the contributions of animal models to our knowledge. Andrew Mayes argues that the memory deficits found in several neurological and psychiatric syndromes comprise co-occurring elementary memory disorders. Finally, he outlines the implications of his taxonomy for our understanding of normal memory. A wide audience of researchers and students will find Human Organic Memory Disorders a helpful guide to a complex problem area.