Originally published in 1975, this title presented current theories in information processing and cognition at the time. The topics fall into three major groups. The first section is concerned with the issues of perception and initial processing of visual material; the second section is addressed to problem of storage, retrieval, and consciousness in memory; the final section is related to the processing of language.

Originally published in 1974, this volume presents up-to-date original research and theory in the field of cognition. The contributors survey the most intriguing problems of the area, including the construction of memory, retrieval from memory, concept formation, and problem solving. Also considered in the light of current cognitive theory are the fundamental questions of how language is formed and how learning takes place. The volume often views past theory and data from the perspective o...

Only human beings have a rich conceptual repertoire with concepts like tort, entropy, Abelian group, mannerism, icon and deconstruction. How have humans constructed these concepts? And once they have been constructed by adults, how do children acquire them? While primarily focusing on the second question, in The Origin of Concepts , Susan Carey shows that the answers to both overlap substantially. Carey begins by characterizing the innate starting point for conceptual development, namely s...

First published in 1979. Basic research, at its essence, is exploration of the unknown. When it is successful, isolated pieces of reality are deciphered and described. Most of the history of an empirical discipline consists of probes into this darkness-some bold, others careful and systematic. Most of these efforts are initially incorrect. At best, they are distant approximations to a reality that may not be correctly specified for centuries. How, then, can we describe the fragmented knowl...

First published in 1967, this seminal volume by Ulric Neisser was the first attempt at a comprehensive and accessible survey of Cognitive Psychology; as such, it provided the field with its first true textbook.Its chapters are organized so that they began with stimulus information that came 'inward' through the organs of sense, through its many transformations and reconstructions, and finally through to its eventual use in thought and memory.The volume inspired numerous stu...

Originally published in 1983, the 14 chapters in this volume are based upon presentations made to a conference held at the University of Western Ontario in June, 1981. The primary purpose of that conference was to mark the 10th anniversary of the publication of Allan Paivio’s text, Imagery and Verbal Processes, and to acknowledge the continuing contribution that Paivio was making to imagery research and theory at the time.His landmark book had been the major publication in...

The editors of this volume suggest that there are missing elements in the conceptualization upon which standard test theory is based. Those elements are models for just how people know what they know and do what they can do, and the ways in which they increase these capacities. Different models are useful for different purposes; therefore, broader or alternative student models may be appropriate. The chapters in this volume consider a variety of directions in which standard test theory mig...

This important new book synthesizes relevant research on the learning of mathematics from birth into the primary grades from the full range of these complementary perspectives. At the core of early math experts Julie Sarama and Douglas Clements's theoretical and empirical frameworks are learning trajectories—detailed descriptions of children’s thinking as they learn to achieve specific goals in a mathematical domain, alongside a related set of instructional tasks designed to engender those...

Consciousness seems to be an enigmatic phenomenon: it is difficult to imagine how our perceptions of the world and our inner thoughts, sensations and feelings could be related to the immensely complicated biological organ we call the brain. This volume presents the thoughts of some of the leading philosophers and cognitive scientists who have recently participated in the discussion of the status of consciousness in science. The focus of inquiry is the question: "Is it possible to incorpora...

The plan for this volume emerged during the international Leipzig conference commemorating the centenary of the death of Gustav Fechner. The contributors suggested that while many features of modern psychological theory were anticipated by Fechner, many new theoretical approaches owe much more to him than often is realized. As such, they decided to honor Fechner by evaluating his own contribution to the founding of psychology and psychoanalysis, by deepening the foundations of psychologica...

This work argues that cognitive development is experience driven, and processes entailed in acquiring information about the world are analyzed based on recent models of learning and induction. The way information is represented and accessed when performing cognitive tasks is considered paying particular attention to the implications of Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) models for cognitive development.The first half of the book contains analyses of human reasoning processes (dr...

This book presents recent research on the role of space as a mechanism in language use and learning. It proceeds from the notion that cognition in real time, developmental time, and over evolutionary time occurs in space, and that the physical properties of space may provide insights into basic cognitive processes, including memory, attention, action, and perception. It looks at how physical space and landmarks are used in cognitive representations and serve as the basis of human cognition...