Psychology

How does motivation work? The classic answer is that people are motivated to approach pleasure and avoid pain, that they are motivated by “carrots and sticks.” But to understand human motivation, it is necessary to go beyond pleasure and pain. What people want is to be effective in their life pursuits, and there are three distinct ways that people want to be effective. They want to be effective in having desired results (value), which includes having pleasure but is not limited to pleasure. They want to be effective in managing what happens (control) and in establishing what's real (truth), even if the process of managing what happens or establishing what's real is painful. These three distinct ways of wanting to be effective go beyond just wanting pleasure, but there is even more to the story of how motivation works. These ways of wanting to be effective do not function in isolation. Rather, they work together. Indeed, the ways that value, truth, and control work together is the central story of motivation. By understanding how motivation works as an organization of value, truth, and control, we can re-think basic motivational issues, such the nature of personality and culture, how the motives of others can be managed effectively, and what is “the good life”.

For years now, learning has been at the heart of research within cognitive psychology. How do we acquire new knowledge and new skills? Are the principles underlying skill acquisition unique to learning, or similar to those underlying other behaviours? Is the mental system essentially modular, or is the mental system a simple product of experience, a product that, inevitably, reflects the shape of the external world with all of its specialisms and similarities? This book takes the view that learning is a major influence on the nature of the processes and representations that fill our minds. Throughout, the book reviews and considers the areas of skill acquisition and lexical representation to illustrate the effects that practice can have on cognitive processes. It also draws parallels between theories in physical and biological domains to propose not only a new theory of mental function, but also demonstrate that the mind is essentially subject to the same natural laws as the physical world. In so doing, this book presents a new perspective on psychology — one that identifies universal principles underlying all behaviours and one which contrasts markedly from the current focus on highly specific behaviours.

Damage to a particular area of the brain — the neocortex — is generally understood to result in blindness. Studies of some patients who have suffered from this form of blindness have nevertheless revealed that they can, in fact, discriminate certain types of visual events within their ‘blind’ fields without being aware that they can do so: they think they are only ‘guessing’. This phenomenon has been termed ‘blindsight’ by the author of this book and his collaborators who were among the first to describe it. It continues to attract considerable interest among neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who see possible implications for theories of perception and consciousness. This book gives an account of the research into a particular case of blindsight, together with a discussion of the historical and neurological background. The empirical findings are followed by a review of other cases reported by other investigators, in which there is a dysjunction between clinical assessment of blindness and unexpected findings of residual function. Finally, a number of theoretical and practical issues and implications are discussed. This reissued version of the text includes a new Introduction summarizing some of the advances that have taken place in the field since the book was first published in 1986.

This book looks at what we have learned over the last century in attempting to discover how the brain enables us to acquire, retain, and use information based on experiences. The major central questions posed in the book are: What processes underlie the formation of new memories? What processes determine the strength of memories? Where are the changes underlying memory located? The chapters in this book review recent progress in research investigating emotion and memory, aging and memory, plasticity of the cerebral cortex, and synaptic connectivity and memory. William James, Ivan Pavlov, Karl Lashley, Donald Hebb, and the other pioneers in this field would, of course, find these topics familiar. But they would also find that in recent years these topics have been investigated in unexpected ways and that the findings have greatly expanded the questions that can be asked as well as the experimental techniques that can be employed.

Magnetic resonance imaging methods, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), have taken a commanding position in brain studies because they allow scientists to follow brain activities in the living human. The ability to measure cerebral anatomy, neuronal firing, and brain metabolism has extended and reinvigorated hopes of understanding the role that brain activity plays in human life. Neuroscientists, measuring brain energies and work by imaging methods, have consciously or unconsciously been incorporating philosophical views into the planning and interpretations of these experiments. This book assumes that behavior is a property only of the person; that the person, not the brain, remembers, intends, or decides. The brain’s role is to help the person perform these actions just as the muscle helps him to lift heavy objects and the liver maintains chemical homeostasis. Origins of the brain’s role in neuroscience are explored in a selective history of relevant philosophies and by examples of successful interdisciplinary experiments. Neuroimaging experiments that relate brain activities to observables, including human behavior, are herein valued above those that conduct futile searches for the neuronal basis of mental processes. In accord with the emphasis on observable behavior, neuroimaging results responsible for two different forms of conscious behavior have been identified and the means of studying them described.

Cognitive neuroscience is a growth area in psychology and neuroscience, with insights into the brain mechanisms of cognitive abilities being gained from studies of both animals and humans. This book brings together contributors to provide an overview of knowledge of the essential neural mechanisms of perception, learning, and memory. The book describes advances in cognitive neuroscience and will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and animal behaviour.

Many international development efforts have been limited because they are elaborated as exclusively economic projects. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen argues, however, that combating poverty requires expanding individual freedoms and capabilities, in place of bolstering only macroeconomic growth. Based on the work of IMIFAP (The Mexican Institute of Family and Population Research) in Mexico and Latin America, this book seeks to transform Sen’s philosophical approach into an operative model for sustainable development through its Framework for Enabling Empowerment (FrEE). The book offers a new, practical paradigm based in social psychology which empowers marginalized individuals to interact critically and constructively with their social, education, health and civic contexts.

This book contains chapters which propose ways to bridge cultural and developmental approaches to human psychology. The chapters heed the call of cultural psychology to study different peoples around the world and to recognize that culture profoundly impacts how we think, feel, and act. At the same time, they also take seriously the developmental science perspective that humans everywhere share common life stage tasks and ways of learning. Doing what has not previously been done, the chapters integrate key insights and findings from cultural and developmental research. This book is in step with a world where culturally diverse peoples interact with one another more than ever due to migration, worldwide media, and international trade and travel. With these interactions come changes to cultures and the psychological development of their members, and the implications for scholarship and policy are thoughtfully examined here. The book covers a wide range of related topics. It addresses the intersection of development and culture for psychological processes such as learning and memory, for key contexts of development such as family and civil society, for conceptions of self and identity, and for how the life course is partitioned including a focus on childhood and emerging adulthood.

How can youth in different cultural communities forge identities and college pathways without losing ties to their communities? New evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, about how youth navigate across the cultural worlds of their families, schools, peers, and community programs, is advancing research, practice, and policies to open academic pipelines. This book examines the academic pipeline problem, as students, especially ethnic minority, immigrant, and low—income youth, leave school too early. It considers research, practice, and policies relating to opening both pathways and pipelines and bridges across the social sciences—developmental and social psychology, sociology, anthropology, and education—by integrating findings on five issues core to this problem. It aligns related models and evidence about how youth develop their identities as they navigate pathways from childhood through school to careers, with a new multi—level theory that addresses these issues. Evidence is drawn from an innovative blend of quantitative and qualitative methods, offering a diversity of cultural examples and breadth of references. Presenting tools to help build a common language among researchers, educators, and policymakers, this book speaks to the rising global awareness for opening higher education to immigrant, ethnic minority, and low—income youth.