Books in Psychology general

Suicide and Self-Damaging Behavior

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Denys deCatanzaro
David T. Lykken
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 7 4 0 1 0

Suicide and Self-Damaging Behavior: A Sociobiological Perspective reviews the status of suicide and other exceptions to the prevailing regularities of behavior. This book discusses the apparent anomaly of self-destructive behavior; current incidence of suicide and self-injury; self-destructiveness in other species; and biological fitness and social ecology of suicide. The pro-suicidal gene expression and natural selection; death concept; breakdown of other life-preserving factors with coping failure; and selection processes and altruism are also elaborated. This text likewise covers the chronic self-abuse, risk taking, and self-injurious or self-mutilative behavior. This publication is a good source for anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and social scientists concerned with self-destructive behavior.

Studies in Machiavellianism

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Richard Christie + 1 more
Leon Festinger + 1 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 6 0 6 0 0

Studies in Machiavellianism covers the various aspects of Machiavellian personality and characteristics. Traditionally, the "Machiavellian" is someone who views and manipulates others for his own purposes. This 17-chapter text discusses the empirical findings on approved canons of social psychological reporting concerning Machiavellianism. The introductory chapters examine the relationships between Machiavellianism and measures of ability, opinion, and personality, as well as the visual interaction in relation to Machiavellianism and an unethical act. The succeeding chapters discuss the results and implications of the Machiavel study, with a particular emphasis on the measure of success of attempts to manipulate others. Other chapters deal with the results of the Con and Ten Dollar Games along with their interpretation. The remaining chapters discuss the laboratory and field research studies of Machiavellianism, as well as its social correlation. This book will prove useful to social psychologist, behaviorists, historians, and researchers.

Infant Perception: From Sensation to Cognition

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Leslie B. Cohen + 1 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 7 1 0 1 9

Infant Perception: From Sensation to Cognition, Volume II: Perception of Space, Speech, and Sound covers comprehensive programmatic examinations, which are arranged along a continuum from basic sensory and neurophysiological functioning to information processing and memory. This volume is organized into two parts encompassing six chapters, and begins with the difficulties prior research has had in assessing infant perception of depth or space. The next chapters provide a link between infants' perception of space and their perception of objects and evaluate both psychometric studies of object concept development and studies focusing specifically on Piaget's theory. These topics are followed by discussions of the infant's development of the concept of self, and that concept is used to explain the infant's perception of other persons. The final chapters deal with the infant vision and audition. These chapters specifically describe the developmental anatomy of the auditory pathway and the electrophysiological functioning and capacity. A series of studies on the infant's receptiveness for the segmental units of speech, the ability to perceive phonemic feature contrasts, and the manner in which this perception occurs is also provided. This book will prove useful to developmental psychologists and biologists.

Paradigms for the Study of Behavior

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
P. Michael Conn
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 6 9 3 7 5

Methods in Neurosciences, Volume 14: Paradigms for the Study of Behavior is a collection of articles that describes the methods for measuring a wide range of behavior. This volume covers the means for measuring different behaviors, such as reproductive, maternal, sexual, aggression, social interactions, feeding behavior, memory analysis, and classical conditioning. The opening papers outline the proper conditions and practical considerations in which the researcher can study the sexual and reproductive behavior of animals in the laboratory. Another paper describes how to assess aggressiveness in rodents including ethical issues involved in such study. The book then discusses the effects of intracerebral administration of neuropeptides in rats using surgical and stereotaxic methods. Another paper presents the measurement of behavioral thermoregulatory reflexes to show acuity of temperature sensation and thermoregulatory control. This volume also discusses the measurement of song-learning behavior in birds through ""sensorimotor,"" ""action-based,"" and ""sensory"" methods of learning. This book will be helpful for students, scientists, technicians, and laboratory workers whose work involves experiments that need to be accurately measured.

Test Design

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Susan E. Embretson
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 6 6 0 9 1

Test Design: Developments in Psychology and Psychometrics is a collection of papers that deals with the diverse developments contributing to the psychometrics of test design. Part I is a review of test design including practices being used in test development. Part II deals with design variables from a psychological theory that includes implications of verbal comprehension theories in the role of intelligence and the effects of these implications on goals, design, scoring, and validation of tests. Part III discusses the latent trait models for test design that have numerous advantages in problems involving item banking, test equating, and computerized adaptive testing. One paper explains the use of the linear exponential model for psychometric models in speed test construction. The book discusses the traditional psychometric; the Hunt, Frost, and Lunnerbog theory; and the single-latency distribution model. Part IV examines test designs from the perspective of test developments in the future integrating technology, cognitive science, and psychometric theories. Psychologists, psychometricians, educators, and researchers in the field of human development studies will value this book.

Contemporary Scientific Psychology

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Albert R. Gilgen
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 6 6 1 8 3

Contemporary Scientific Psychology is a compendium of papers dealing with the scientific method in action in psychology. The first two papers introduce the paradigm, progress, and problems found in scientific psychology, as well as the observation, discovery, and confirmation used in theory building (including fallacies pertaining to theory construction). Other papers deal with research areas such as the neurobehavioral foundations of the biology of mind. This research area includes the mechanism-specific approaches in behavior genetics, particularly the genetic effect as such effect is considered dependent on the mechanisms altered by the environment or the genetic equivalent of a stimuli. Another paper discusses comparative psychology in studies involving animal behavior, while another author tackles the significant trends in the field of developmental psychology, especially as this relates to the early learning processes of humans. This book can be helpful for students and teachers in courses related to experimental psychology, psychological theories, philosophy of science, and other academicians and professionals who are interested in general psychology.

Home Environment and Early Cognitive Development

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Allen W. Gottfried
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 7 3 3 8 9

Home Environment and Early Cognitive Development: Longitudinal Research presents the results of longitudinal studies in Canada and the United States that looked into the relationship between home environment and early cognitive development. The aim of these investigations is to determine the specific or process home environmental variables that correlate with and possibly regulate cognitive development during infancy and the preschool years. Comprised of 10 chapters, this book begins with a brief introduction to the issues investigated. Each of the following seven chapters is devoted to a longitudinal investigation, with emphasis on data presentation, analysis, and interpretation. The influence of home environment on cognitive development in young children of middle-socioeconomic... families as well as Mexican-American children is considered. Assessments of cognitive development are carried out using standard psychometric tests of intelligence; Piagetian-type measures of sensorimotor development; measures of language development; and measures of recognition memory for infants. The final chapter assesses the implications for intervention of the link between home environment and early cognitive development. This monograph will be of interest to psychologists and sociologists.

Physique and Delinquent Behavior

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Emil M. Hartl + 2 more
David T. Lykken
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 6 4 6 2 2

Physique and Delinquent Behavior: A Thirty-year Follow-Up of William H. Sheldon's Varieties of Delinquent Youth is a progress report on the lives of 200 men. The men detailed in this book started as boys in the middle 1930s that included runaways, truants, and delinquents. They became adults during the fluid socioeconomic, political and cultural times in the Unites States. The book defines the psychiatric variables and presents brief biographies of these men. The authors then apply a statistical review of the careers of these men that included 20 cases in a normal group, 90 cases in a second-order psychopathic groups, 12 cases in a borderline psychopathy group, 11 cases in a first order psychopathy group, and 16 cases of alcoholism. The rest are also classified in other groups such as gynephrenosis, criminality, or medical insufficiency. The authors point that an increasing probability of gynephrenotic difficulty in men whose ratings diverge far from that of the male mean. The authors also note that the constitutional approach they applied can explain some complex relation between biology and sex-related behavior. This book is suitable for behavioral scientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, students and professors in the sciences of human behavior.

Parent–Child Interaction

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Ronald W. Henderson
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 6 0 7 3 0

Parent-Child Interaction: Theory, Research, and Prospects is intended (a) to provide a synthesis of a segment of this growing body of literature on interrelationships between children and their parents; (b) to examine the theoretical implications of this research; (c) to review and assess common methodological approaches to the study of home environmental influences on the development of children; and (d) to identify directions future research must take if our understanding of family influences and their place in a broader sociocultural context is to be extended. The book is organized into three parts. Part I examines theory and research on major aspects of parent-child influence processes. Part II examines the methods employed in research on family environments and considers the unique features that distinguish research on home environmental influences from traditional educational research. Part III provides different perspectives on the application of psychological knowledge to socialization processes. This book is intended for educational and developmental psychologists with interests in socialization processes as well as for practitioners who design parental programs that minimize discontinuities between competing socialization influences. This volume will also prove useful in graduate courses in educational, developmental, and community psychology; as a reference for professionals involved in school psychology, school administration, and pupil personnel work; and for psychologists and social workers involved in youth service agencies, child guidance, diagnostic clinics, parent education, and family therapy.

The Nature of Theory and Research in Social Psychology

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Clyde Hendrick + 1 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 6 0 8 9 1

The Nature of Theory and Research in Social Psychology aims to provide advanced undergraduate and graduate students with a solid foundation in the logic of theory construction and the experimental method; and to teach students how to read, critically evaluate, and appreciate professional literature in the behavioral sciences. The book is believed to be unique in this latter respect and that it will serve a vital need in several different courses. The book is organized into two parts. Part I contains a detailed exposition of the nature of theory and research. It discusses the nature of formal theory, derivation of hypotheses, and the testing of hypotheses. It explicates in great detail the experimental approach to hypothesis testing. Both formal and informal aspects of a psychological experiment are discussed. Part II includes five chapters that enable students to put their analytical skills to use. Five substantive areas from social psychology have been selected. Each chapter includes three reprinted journal articles, and the chapter may be considered a ""case study"" in the analysis of experimental research in a given problem area. The following topics are covered in this section: dissonance and disconfirmed expectancies; dissonance and severity of initiation, primary-recency in personality impression formation, forewarning and anticipatory attitude change, and dependency and helping.

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