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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.

  • Natural and Artificial Intelligence

    Misconceptions about Brains and Neural Networks
    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • A. de CallataĂż
    • English
    How does the mind work? How is data stored in the brain? How does the mental world connect with the physical world? The hybrid system developed in this book shows a radically new view on the brain. Briefly, in this model memory remains permanent by changing the homeostasis rebuilding the neuronal organelles. These transformations are approximately abstracted as all-or-none operations. Thus the computer-like neural systems become plausible biological models. This illustrated book shows how artificial animals with such brains learn invariant methods of behavior control from their repeated actions. These robots can make decisions in any circumstances and reason by analogy whenever possible.This new and expanded edition includes a prologue exploring the problems which have stopped the development of fully fledged brain models. The causes of these deadlocks are listed as potential misconceptions about brain principles, neural networks, nervous systems, robotics, programming and decision logic.
  • Quick Answers to Quantitative Problems

    A Pocket Primer
    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • G. William Page + 1 more
    • English
    No matter the field, professionals need to respond quickly to quantitative problems as they arise and to develop a quick understanding of what the data mean. Whether you are an aide to a city council member trying to decipher the true meaning of a citizen opinion poll, a private consultant to the health department estimating the number of pregnant teenagers in a neighborhood, or the executive director of a small agency striving to present your budget facts precisely and clearly, the techniques presented here are helpful to you and your work.
  • Economics and Cognitive Science

    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • Paul Bourgine + 1 more
    • English
    Economics, dealing with mental processes of decision makers is part of cognitive science; conversely, cognitive science, faced with constraints on information processing, is part of economics. In July 1990, the Cecoia 2 conference was organised in Paris to further explore the connections between the two. The papers presented in this volume illustrate this truly interdisciplinary research intertwining social and cognitive sciences. Three main topics are represented: agent's mental representation when facing complex uncertainty; agent's computational constraints leading to bounded rationality; agent's learning and evolution in an imperfectly known environment.
  • Handbook of Perception: Perceptual Processing v. 9

    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • SWAINE
    • English
    Handbook of Perception, Volume IX: Perceptual Processing covers perceptual processing mechanisms, such as attention, search, selection, pattern recognition, and perceptual learning. This volume contains articles that tackle topics on the mechanisms of attention, perceptual structure and selection, selection and categorization in visual search, and the psychological processes in pattern recognition. Subjects on how individual letters are processed, eye movements, perceptual learning, possible explanations of stimulus ambiguity, and perceptual anomalies, distortions, and disorders. This book will be of use to psychologists, biologists, and those interested in the study of perceptual processing.
  • Schools & Persistent Absentees

    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • D. Galloway
    • English
    Drawing on an extensive study of persistent absentees, their families and their schools, David Galloway explores the prevalence of absence from schools and the underlying causes. He shows that a majority of poor attendees remain at home with their parents' knowledge, and often with their consent, and argues that the disadvantaged circumstances of many of the families concerned is of little relevance to teachers unless they also recognize how the pupils and their families view what the school has to offer. Using his experience as a teacher, educational psychologist and researcher, he demonstrates that school attendance cannot be usefully considered in isolation from the life and work of the school as a whole.
  • Cognitive Development and Acquisition of Language

    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • Timothy E. Moore
    • English
    Cognitive Development and Acquisition of Language provides information pertinent to the relationship between cognitive development and language acquisition. This book describes some of the ways in which cognitive growth is reflected in, and interacts with, the development of language. Organized into 13 chapters, this book begins with an overview of generative transformational grammar. This text then presents some of the methodological problems inherent in the investigation of language acquisition. Other chapters consider the argument that the child acquires English expressions for space and time by learning how to apply these expressions to the a priori knowledge he has about time and space. This book discusses as well a general hypothesis about the semantic knowledge by the child. The final chapter provides an integrative review of the research on language development and suggests some ways in which cognitive development and language acquisition are interdependent. This book is a valuable resource for psychologists and linguists.
  • New Horizon Testing

    Latent Trait Test Theory and Computerized Adaptive Testing
    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • David J. Weiss
    • English
    New Horizons in Testing: Latent Trait Test Theory and Computerized Adaptive Testing provides an in-depth analysis of psychological measurement, espoused by the computer-latent trait test theory (item response theory) and computerized adaptive testing. The book is organized into five parts. The first part addresses basic problems in estimating the parameters of the item response theory models that constitute a class of latent trait test theory models. The second part, discusses the implications of item response theory for measuring individuals using more than just simply a trait level (e.g., ability) score. Part III describes the application of item response theory models to specific applied problems, including the problem of equating tests or linking items into a pool, a latent trait model for timed tests, and the problem of measuring growth using scores derived from the application of item response theory models. Part IV is concerned with the application of item response theory to computerized adaptive testing. Finally, Part V includes discussion of two special models beyond the standard models used in the rest of the book. One of these models, the constant information model, is a simplification of the general latent trait models, whereas the other is an extension of latent trait models to the problem of measuring change. Psychometricians, psychologists, and psychiatrists will find the book useful.
  • Language Processing in Social Context

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 54
    • June 28, 2014
    • R. Dietrich + 1 more
    • English
    The book presents an interdisciplinary analysis of social, cognitive, situational and contextual aspects of language and language processing by first and second language speakers. Linguists and psychologists formulate theoretical models and empirical analyses of the influence of such factors on various levels of language processing. These relate specifically to syntactic and semantic parsing, lexical selection, and text production. The issue of ``hearer orientation'' in language use lies at the forefront of interest in this anthology and is tackled from such different fields as linguistics, text linguistics, formal semantics, social psychology, psychology of language, artificial intelligence, and second language acquisition.
  • FREUDIANISM:A MARXIST CRITIQUE

    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • COLE
    • English
    Freudianism: A Marxist Critique investigates Freud's theory and method, that Freud's use of "the unconscious" in psychoanalysis is questionable. The book discusses that the unconscious is an aspect of "the conscious" something like an "unofficial conscious" different from the normal, everyday "official conscious." The conscious is assumed as an "inner speech" with the properties of language, and because the unconscious is an aspect of the conscious, hence the unconscious is also linguistic in nature. Humans, according to Freud's theory, are inherently false, individualistic, asocial, existing in an ahistorical setting. The strength of the book comes from its concept of discourse that binds humans together in their social contexts of action and history through language. The book notes that the "cosmism" of Steiner's anthroposophy, Bergson's biologism, and Frued's psychobiologism and sexualism have endowed with their own features the physiognomy of the modern "Kulturmensch." In this culture, the Steinerians, the Bergsonians, and the Freudians have raised the three altars of Frued's belief—magic, instinct, and sex. Psychiatrists, psycho-analysts, psychologists, philosophers, as well as students of psychology and its related branches will find this book very challenging.
  • Language: Social Psychological Perspectives

    Selected Papers from the First International Conference on Social Psychology and Language held at the University of Bristol, England, July 1979
    • 1st Edition
    • June 28, 2014
    • H. Giles + 2 more
    • English
    Provides a comprehensive review of the relationships between language and social behaviour. The papers will be of interest not only to psychologists concerned with language and social behaviour, but also to linguists, sociologists and social workers, anthropologists and psychiatrists