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Books in Psychology

Elsevier's Psychology collection is vital for students and psychologists, providing a thorough understanding of the mind and behavior. Covering human thought, development, personality, emotion, and motivation, it offers insights into both theoretical and practical aspects. Through topics like cognitive, developmental, and clinical psychology, it equips researchers and students to address real-world challenges and advance their understanding of the field.

  • Cognitive Issues in Motor Expertise

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 102
    • J. Starkes + 1 more
    • English
    The intent of this book is to describe those perceptual and cognitive components which contribute to skilled motor performance in a wide variety of disciplines, including sports, microsurgery, video games, and speech. Also considered are issues in the measurement of motor skill, the development of motor skill across the life span, and the importance of individual differences in the development of motor skill. Many chapters contain studies employing the expertise approach used so successfully to study cognitive skills in psychology. Using this approach, expert performers are compared to novices on domain relevant laboratory tasks in order to determine whether specific cognitive or perceptual processes are related to performance differences.This volume will be of value to kinesiologists, sport psychologists, physical educators, and cognitive psychologists who are interested in a new perspective on the nature of motor skills. The majority of the chapters include reviews of the literature necessary to understand the case being made. Thus, the book may be understood by any reader with a basic course in psychology or motor behavior.
  • Memory in Everyday Life

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 100
    • G.M. Davies + 1 more
    • English
    The last decade has seen a major growth in research on how memory is used in everyday life. This volume represents a reaction to traditional laboratory-bound studies of the first half of the century which sought to identify the fundamental principles of learning and memory through the use of materials and methods totally divorced from the real world. The new wave of memory research has had considerable success in charting how memory develops, the role it plays in educational and social skills and the impact of memory impairment on mental life. The current volume consists of authoritative reviews of this emerging area linked to comment and criticism from major researchers in the field.Contrasted, probably for the first time, are two major styles of research in applied memory research: The naturalistic approach, which has sought to study memory in everyday environments, using actual experiences from people's lives as the raw data from which to derive more general principles, and the applied cognitive approach, whereby theories and methods are developed using orthodox laboratory techniques which are then validated by applying them directly to real phenomena. This is one of the few books to bring together evidence across the very wide spectrum of humdrum activity that constitutes the everyday uses of memory.
  • Foundations of Perceptual Theory

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 99
    • S.C. Masin
    • English
    Historical analysis reveals that perceptual theories and models are doomed to relatively short lives. The most popular contemporary theories in perceptual science do not have as wide an acceptance among researchers as do some of those in other sciences. To understand these difficulties, the authors of the present volume explore the conceptual and philosophical foundations of perceptual science. Based on logical analyses of various problems, theories, and models, they offer a number of reasons for the current weakness of perceptual explanations. New theoretical approaches are also proposed. At the end of each chapter, dicussants contribute to the conclusions by critically examining the authors' ideas and analyses.
  • Imagery, Creativity, and Discovery

    A Cognitive Perspective
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 98
    • B. Roskos-Ewoldsen + 2 more
    • English
    What factors affect creativity and the generation of creative images? What factors affect the ability to reinterpret those images? Research described in this book indicates that expectations constrain both of these attributes of creativity. Characteristics of the imagined pattern, such as cohesiveness or its psychological goodness, also affect image generation and reinterpretation. Other evidence indicates that images can be combined mentally to yield new, manipulable composites. Cognitive models encompass the research and extend it to fields as diverse as architecture, music, and problem solving.
  • The Development of Coordination in Infancy

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 97
    • G.J.P. Savelsbergh
    • English
    This volume attempts to bring together a collection of current approaches to, and related empirical investigations on, the development of coordination in the first two years of life. It will be of interest to scientists and students in, for example, biology, human movement sciences, kinesiology, psychology, pediatrics, physiology, physical education, physical therapy and robotics.Contributor... include those with established reputations in the field, as well as young authors, who are beginning to make their mark. Their efforts resulted in twenty chapters, of which seventeen were invited. The chapters have been divided into four sections. The first chapter is intended to outline the structure of the book.
  • Affect, Cognition and Stereotyping

    Interactive Processes in Group Perception
    • 1st Edition
    • Diane M. Mackie + 1 more
    • English
    This volume presents a collection of chapters exploring the interface of cognitive and affective processes in stereotyping. Stereotypes and prejudice have long been topics of interest in social psychology, but early literature and research in this area focused on affect alone, while later studies focused primarily on cognitive factors associated with information processing strategies. This volume integrates the roles of both affect and cognition with regard to the formation, representation, and modification of stereotypes and the implications of these processes for the escalation or amelioration of intergroup tensions.
  • Advances in the Study of Behavior

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 22
    • English
    Advances in the Study of Behavior is the leading series in its field. Each volume includes a variety of review essays by experts providing authoritative overviews of key areas of current interest that are invaluable to the teacher, student, and researcher in the field of behavior, whether psychologist or biologist. This volume continues the tradition of excellence in the study of behavior by covering a whole range of biological and psychological research. Each of the chapters presents new ideas, with a particularly interesting approach to sexual coercion. The volume as a whole has a particular strength in the area of behavioral development, which is the main topic of the last three chapters.
  • Advances in Child Development and Behavior

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 24
    • English
    Advances in Child Development and Behavior is intended to ease the task faced by researchers, instructors, and students who are confronted by the vast amount of research and theoretical discussion in child development and behavior. The serial provides scholarly technical articles and a place for the publication of scholarly speculation. In these documented critical reviews, recent advances in the field are summarized and integrated, complexities are exposed, and fresh viewpoints are offered. The serial should be useful to experts it the area as well as graduate students. Each volume of Advances in Child Development and Behavior contains an index, and each chapter includes references.
  • The Intelligent Imitator

    Towards an Exemplar Theory of Behavioral Choice
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 95
    • R. Kvadsheim
    • English
    This monograph presents a novel conceptual framework for the study of human social behavior with potentially far-reaching implications. Owing to the role it accords to stored memory representations of observed occurrences (examples) of actions, the proposed framework is referred to as the Exemplar Choice Theory, or ECT. The theory links perception and action and combines an expectancy-value perspective on choice behavior, with features of recent exemplar-based approaches to the study of human information processing. It addresses the influence of social models, as well as the impact of past action consequences and differs from extant theories of instrumental learning. The volume focuses on two extreme classes of conditions defined in terms of the actor's limited access to information and discusses available evidence from many areas of psychology. Its structure is as follows: the introductory chapter locates the proposed theory within a historical context; this is followed by an overview of the main structure of the conceptual framework; subsequently, general propositions are presented and discussed in detail; later, empirical implications are derived for certain extreme classes of choice conditions and considered in the light of empirical evidence. It is hoped the publication will inspire students and researchers of psychology, biology, zoology and of many social sciences, including sociology, anthropology, decision research, marketing, economics, cognitive science and mass media studies to undertake further research and to reconsider existing data and frameworks.
  • Orthography, Phonology, Morphology and Meaning

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 94
    • R. Frost + 1 more
    • English
    The area of research on printed word recognition has been one of the most active in the field of experimental psychology for well over a decade. However, notwithstanding the energetic research effort and despite the fact that there are many points of consensus, major controversies still exist.This volume is particularly concerned with the putative relationship between language and reading. It explores the ways by which orthography, phonology, morphology and meaning are interrelated in the reading process. Included are theoretical discussions as well as reviews of experimental evidence by leading researchers in the area of experimental reading studies. The book takes as its primary issue the question of the degree to which basic processes in reading reflect the structural characteristics of language such as phonology and morphology. It discusses how those characteristics can shape a language's orthography and affect the process of reading from word recognition to comprehension.Contri... by specialists, the broad-ranging mix of articles and papers not only gives a picture of current theory and data but a view of the directions in which this research area is vigorously moving.