Books in Social sciences and humanities

2721-2730 of 6225 results in All results

The Development of Prosocial Behavior

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Nancy Eisenberg + 1 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 8 8 4 7 - 5

Developmental Psychology Series: The Development of Prosocial Behavior focuses on the advancement of techniques, methodologies, and approaches involved in studies on prosocial behavior, including moral reasoning and judgment, altruism, liberalism, and conservatism. The publication first elaborates on the general conceptual and theoretical issues in the study of prosocial and altruistic behavior; early development and socialization of prosocial behavior; and the relationship between prosocial behavior and moral reasoning. The text then takes a look at the generality of altruism in children, social learning theory and development of prosocial behavior, and the development of altruism. Discussions focus on directions for research on prosocial behaviors; research findings and interpretations on the early forms of altruism; social learning of prosocial behavior and moral judgment; and generality of prosocial behavior. The manuscript examines personality development and liberal sociopolitical attitudes, development of prosocial motivation, and the effects of mood on prosocial behavior in children and adults. Topics include motivational mechanisms of prosocial acts, dialectics of development, antecedents of liberalism and conservatism in adults, and personality and socialization in relation to adolescents' political orientations. The book is a dependable source of data for researchers interested in the development of prosocial behavior.

Working Models of Human Perception

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Ben A.G. Elsendoorn
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 8 8 4 8 - 2

This book devotes attention to both theoretical and applied problems simultaneously. Many applied problems turn out to be very difficult and they often need deep theoretical insight in order to get solved. In fact, applied problems often serve as a source of inspiration for theoretical work, since they usually are beyond reach of present theories and may show us in what direction theories need to be developed.The layout of the book is a reflection of the three main areas of research at the Institute for Perception Research: Hearing and Speech, Vision and Reading, Cognition and Communication. Following the set-up of the workshop, the organization of the papers is in pairs, such that the odd-numbered chapters are generally reactions to the even-numbered chapters.

Individual Differences and Psychopathology

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Anthony Gale + 1 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 1 7 9 0 - 1

Physiological Correlates of Human Behaviour, Vol. 3: Individual Differences and Psychopathology offers an introduction to biological research into human behavior. The book discusses the three major dimensions of personality (extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism) and the major theories of the underlying psychophysiological causes for the observed differences in behavior; and the theory of anxiety. The text also describes the measures of individual differences in habituation of physiological responses; the perspectives on pain; the cortical correlates of intelligence; and sensation seeking as a biosocial dimension of personality. The individual differences in evoked potentials; Pavlov's nervous system typology; theories of psychosomatic disorders; and the role of learning and organismic variables in criminality are also considered. The book further tackles some problems and controversies in the psychophysiological investigation of schizophrenia; the psychophysiological contributions to psychotherapy research; and the use of psychophysiological measures for investigating the influence of social factors on psychiatric relapse. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and behavioural psychologists will find the book invaluable.

The Psychology of Humor

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Jeffrey H Goldstein
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 8 8 5 4 - 3

The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues examines theoretical perspectives and empirical issues concerning the psychology of humor. Theoretical views of humor range from the physiological to the sociological and anthropological. The relations between humor, laughter, and smiling are considered, along with the connection between collative variables and arousal. Comprised of 13 chapters, this book begins with an introduction to the history of thought and major theoretical issues on humor, followed by a description of models of different aspects of humor. The next section deals with empirical issues in which selected research areas are given detailed attention. The relations between humor, laughter, and smiling, on the one hand, and collative variables and arousal, on the other, are analyzed. Subsequent chapters explore the cognitive origins of incongruity humor by comparing fantasy assimilation and reality assimilation; a two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons; and the social functions and physiological correlates of humor. The relationship between arousal potential and funniness of jokes is also explored, together with humor judgments as a function of reference groups and identification classes. The final chapter presents an annotated bibliography of published papers on humor in the research literature and an analysis of trends between 1900 and 1971. This monograph will be of interest to psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and behavioral scientists.

Emotions and Bodily Responses

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
James L McGaugh
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 8 8 5 7 - 4

Emotions and Bodily Responses: A Psychophysiological Approach is an introduction to the principles of psychophysiology as they relate to bodily responses and emotions. The emphasis is on the study of human subjects and on those bodily responses (heart rate, blood pressure, blood volume, electrodermal responses, muscle tension, brain waves) that can be measured from the periphery of the body without the use of invasive techniques. Comprised of nine chapters, this book begins with an overview of some basic physiological principles and recording techniques, followed by a discussion on some of the types of stimuli that cause changes in bodily responses. Subsequent chapters explore individual differences in personality and emotional factors and relate them to differences in physiological responses; how differences in bodily responses are related to the major forms of psychopathology; the link between bodily responses and behavioral performance; and general states such as sleep and stress in relation to bodily responses. Bodily responses that accompany psychosomatic illnesses are also considered, along with the modification of bodily responses by various learning techniques, including Pavlovian conditioning and biofeedback training. The final chapter is devoted to the application of bodily responses to the detection of deception. This monograph is written for students, clinicians, and researchers who would like to become familiar with the basic methods, data, and concepts that relate bodily responses to emotional states.

Communicative Behavior and Evolution

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Martin E. Hahn + 1 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 6 3 4 2 - 7

Communicative Behavior and Evolution presents the selected works of experts from different scientific disciplines that investigate the evolution of communicative behavior. The book is composed of papers that study communicative behavior of humans and of different kinds of animals. The text contains articles that discuss attempts in the study of behavioral evolution; communication and human language; the behavior-genetic approach; systems approach to genetic and selection mechanisms; investigation of interspecific communication; and learned language in chimpanzees. Zoologists, ethologists, behavioral geneticists, and psychologists will find this book highly interesting.

Anxiety

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Bozzano G Luisa
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 8 8 5 8 - 1

This volume analyses the perplexing and often disabling form of distress known as anxiety from a psychological rather than a biomedical perspective, illustrating the rich contribution that psychological theory has made and is making to this topic.**The first section extensively examines the clinical literature, describing and delineating with case examples the cluster of characteristic features termed panic-anxiety. Research findings in other clinical areas such as alcohol dependence are shown to have conceptual and empirical links with panic-anxiety. The second section of the book reviews and evaluates the main theoretical approaches to anxiety, including specific models of panic and agoraphobia, challenging many traditional assumptions and advocating the analysis of anxiety as a socially constructed meaning imposed on experience rather than a theoretical concept or psychopathological state. The methodological implications are discussed and a schematic model of panic-anxiety is proposed.**The theoretical integration represents a major contribution to the resurgence of interest in this field and will be of relevance to all researchers and postgraduate students within the mental health professions.**FROM THE PREFACE: This book has two main objectives. The first is to describe a dimension of psychological distress I have called panic-anxiety. This takes up the first part of the book, which surveys literature that is primarily descriptive and psychiatric. The second objective is pursued in the second part of the book, in which I examine a large number of theories of anxiety to see what they might have to offer in explaining the panic-anxiety cluster of complaints. I am therefore concerned to apply psychological theory to a real-world problem, that is, to what people who seek professional help loosely describe as panic, anxiety and fears of public situations.**The theoretical and experimental literature on anxiety is so vast that I have had to be disciplined and in no small measure prejudiced in favour of a particular theoretical perspective. I have attempted as far as possible to treat anxiety as a lay construct, that is, as a social construction and not a scientific concept. For this reason, I have endeavoured to refer to reports of anxiety or to complaints of anxiety in order to avoid the common tendency to reify anxiety as a an entity which exists independently of the social origins of the term. Accordingly, I believe that the relevant question to ask is not, What is anxiety? but, What are the antecedents of reports (or complaints) of anxiety?**It is intended that this book should provide a coherent perspective on a common form of psychological distress, of value to therapists, researchers and students of abnormal psychology. In many ways, the problems for which people seek help do not define 'natural' areas of scientific research, and so it is difficult to combine theoretical and practical interests in one book. The complaints with which I am particularly concerned--panic and fears of public places--can be analysed to reveal scientific questions which have a significance much wider than the explanation of particular complaints made to professionals working in a clinical context. Apart from its obvious social significance, a clinical area is therefore simply a point of departure for scientific investigation. My intention, then, is to use this clinical area as an illustration of how such problems might be tackled from a theoretical perspective which is essentially psychological.**The theoretical position I have adopted owes much to the views of Sarbin (1964, 1968), Mandler (1975) and Averill (1980a,b). In taking anxiety to be a lay construct, I assume that the 'What is?' questions rightly belong to the sociology of knowledge. Of course, the applied psychologist also has substantive issues to consider. For example, How can this individual be helped to report calmness rather than anxiety? or, How can that individual be helped to travel freely on public transport? I suggest that the most positive contribution a social constructivist position has to offer is to dissuade researchers from regarding these real-life problems as reflecting an underlying emotion of anxiety, or, even less helpful, an anxiety disorder.**Biological and medical research on anxiety is also considered in this light. Reductive biological and pathological hypotheses are rejected, but an attempt is made to integrate the biological aspects at a higher level of analysis. For this reason, the book differs from others which tend to confine themselves to a description and explanation of postulated disorders or syndromes. Because the emphasis of this book is essentially conceptual, there is relatively little discussion of assessment and therapy, apart from a general critique of current approaches.**Most experiences described as fear or anxiety in an everyday context have an identifiable source or object. When these experiences are reported as unbearably intense or lead to the avoidance of various situations, they are generally referred to as phobias. In the past 20 years there has been a considerable advance in the technology of reducing and eliminating unwanted phobias. The new methods of imaginal and real-life confrontation are successful in the majority of cases when anxiety is reported in connection with specific eliciting stimuli. The same success cannot be claimed for methods of dealing with complaints of anxiety that appear to be unrelated to identifiable circumstances. In one form of these complaints, a person may suddenly feel overwhelmed by unpleasant sensations which are usually described as a panic attack. Panic and other complaints of anxiety which are perceived as irrational form the principal interest of this book. A second major concern is the problem of fears of public places, often referred to as agoraphobia. Typically, the person who complains of these fears is unable to leave the home unaccompanied, although travel by car, a 'safe' environment, is usually possible. Although agoraphobia is tied to situations, the fear is not reported to be about these situations but is usually expressed as a fear of experiencing a panic attack in these situations. As I will argue, fears of public situations appear to be associated with panic and complaints of anxiety of a nonspecific kind.**FROM THE FOREWORD: This book is a welcome addition to a growing literature that treats perplexing and sometimes disabling conduct from a psychological rather than a biomedical perspective. It is one of an increasing number of treatises that boldly assume that psychological events may be studied in their own right without reducing the phenomena to biological or mentalistic categories. Among other topics, Hallam critically reviews the clinical and experimental work on self-reported anxiety, panic and agoraphobia. He demonstrates with considerable force the disutility of the traditional practice of assigning such phenomena to a world of disordered minds.**Anxiety has been employed as a key concept in many psychoanalytic and psychological theories. Before its use as a theoretical construct, anxiety was a lay construct, a metaphor invented to communicate about vaguely perceived and poorly understood sensory experience. This lay construct, or metaphor, was metonymically transformed by certain theorists seeking a universal intervening variable to account for puzzling conduct. That is to say, the theorists transfigured anxiety to a cause from its original use as a metaphor for effects of interpersonal actions and physiological responses. As a staple of biomedical research and practice, anxiety is a reified metaphor. One of the results of the uncritical use of the reified metaphor was the creation of such unproductive diagnostic categories as anxiety neurosis, anxiety hysteria and anxiety state. Hallam's review of research and practice makes abundantly clear that this metaphor-to-myth transformation has little utility, either as a heuristic for research or as a model for therapy.**Many lessons are to be learned from this book, not the least of which is the demonstration that the lay construct, anxiety, is multireferential. When a clinician asks a client for referents for such complaints as, 'I am anxious' (or 'panicky' or 'agoraphobic'), the client's response is drawn from a limitless pool of vague and ambiguous descriptors. Examples of the interpretations offered by clients include such diverse referents as 'I had the feeling I was about to die', 'I was suffocating, gasping for air', 'My legs became rubbery', 'I was about to faint', 'My brain was racing ahead of my thought', and so on.**From Hallam's detailed analysis of the multireferential nature of anxiety complaints, one could formulate the following rule for praxis: When a client employs 'anxiety' or a similar descriptor in his or her self-report, regard it as metaphoric utterance, not as a statement that demands causal analysis. The metaphoric utterance, that is, the complaint, is a social construction whose building blocks include the client's beliefs, linguistic skills, purposes and concurrent existential or identity problems.**Another lesson to be learned from this book is the continuity of anxiety complaints as reported in clinical settings with those of persons who do not come to the attention of professional helpers. Such continuity is an argument against the identification of anxiety complaints as a psychiatric disorder. For example, the fear of strange places may be universal and not restricted to a clinical population if the definition of strange places is broad enough.**The author holds that the client, like the rest of us, constructs his or her world from perceptions, beliefs, imaginings and rememberings. Thus anxiety is a construction, and it is communicated to others (and to the self) with the aid of metaphoric and metonymic translations. This constructivist view is fast displacing the entrenched biomedical view that treats human beings as passive reactors to stimuli according to still-to-be discovered mechanistic laws. Metaphors drawn from physics, geology and technology, so tightly woven into the texture of the mechanistic world view, have lost the power to stimulate meaningful research and theory about the complexities of human action. As a result, social scientists are turning to humanistic disciplines for their working metaphors, among them, game playing, narrative, drama and rhetoric.**The use of such descriptive metaphors reflects a world view that is in sharp contrast to the mechanistic world view that has dominated scientific thought, including that of psychology and psychiatry, for so long. Contextualism is the name assigned to this alternative world view, and its root metaphor is the historical act. Among other things, this root metaphor entails that the actors who participate in the creation of historical acts are agents. They engage in intentional actions not only to solve problems of a practical nature, but also to maintain or enhance their identities. Toward this end, they construct their worlds. Some constructions provide the backdrop for personal drama, one outcome of which may be the self-report of anxiety. Another element of the contextualist metaphysic is that change and novelty, rather than invariance, are to be expected.**Hallam's critical review of the scientific literature on anxiety and emotion supports the conclusion that the failure of modern science to formulate a general theory of anxiety is traceable to the slavish (and often unrecognized) adherence to the biomedical model. The users of this model seek causality within the organism, either in the somatic networks or in the assumed mind-space. It is not an inappropriate strategy, given their stance that the objects of their attention are regarded as passive, not as active agents. The supporters of the biomedical model have failed to achieve a consistently workable theory as a basis for therapy because human beings are, in fact, agents. Thus, a clinican who reads this book and elects to apply its wisdom would not address a person's complaint of anxiety with the question, What is the cause of the anxiety? but rather with questions of this sort: What are the antecedent and concurrent interpersonal conditions that influence a person as agent to turn his or her attention to vaguely defined internal events, to choose the sick role or to describe perplexing happenings with particular metaphors or metonymies? What are his or her concerns about death and dying, being abandoned or loss of face? What are the person's power relations and how does the sick role influence his or her relative power? How does the person's self-narrative fit into the self-narratives of significant others?**In my own experience, I have found it useful to look upon complaints of anxiety as a form of attention deployment, not unlike the attention deployment of the classical hypochondriac. The broad focus on bodily symptoms, besides providing the basis for adopting the sick role, effectively supports efforts in the context of significant social relationships not to spell out certain imagined or perceived flaws in one's character. The question that guides the search for understanding is, What are the client's reasons for turning attention to complaints of anxiety? In this respect, the clinician might entertain the hypothesis of self-deception and its implications for discovering and formulating reasons for the client's attention deployment to events described as anxiety.**The foregoing remarks are but a sample of the clinical and theoretical notions generated in my reading of Hallam's treatise. A bountiful harvest of insights awaits both the practicing clinician and the laboratory scientist engaged in solving the mystery of anxiety. The rich yield is due in no small measure to the author's ability simultaneously to reflect his experience as clinician and as scientist. As clinician*b1scientist, he illuminates many puzzling observations and opens the way for a better understanding of human problems.

Invitation to Psychology

2nd Edition
October 22, 2013
John P. Houston + 2 more
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 6 2 9 7 - 0

Invitation to Psychology provides an introduction to fundamental concepts in psychology. It seeks to address the need of both teachers and students by offering two different kinds of chapters. The first variety covers the basic data and research within each of the traditional areas of psychology. In these "basic" chapters, the authors provide up-to-date and complete coverage of important developments in each area. The second type of chapter is innovative. These "exploring" chapters examine some of the practical applications and implications of the findings discussed in the basic chapters. These describe how basic psychological data are being used in the outside world, and discuss ongoing, often controversial explorations into some frontier areas of psychology. In other words, information about explorations and applications that is often scattered through the pages of other texts is brought together into systematic chapters in this text. The dual-chapter approach helps resolve the dilemma of differing expectations of teachers and students. Key topics covered include the definition of psychology; the psychological basis of behavior; sensation and perception; states of awareness; learning, memory, and cognition; motivation and emotion; abnormal psychology and social behavior.

Practical Microwave Electron Devices

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Bozzano G Luisa
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 8 8 6 9 - 7

Practical Microwave Electron Devices provides an understanding of microwave electron devices and their applications. All areas of microwave electron devices are covered. These include microwave solid-state devices, including popular microwave transistors and both passive and active diodes; quantum electron devices; thermionic devices (including relativistic thermionic devices); and ferrimagnetic electron devices. The design of each of these devices is discussed as well as their applications, including oscillation, amplification, switching, modulation, demodulation, and parametric interactions. Numerous design examples and case studies are presented throughout the book. For each microwave electron device covered, typical design examples or case studies are presented as well as qualitative or quantitative explanations. The fundamental theory of each device is summarized along with the underlying principles of the design. Each summary is presented so that the design techniques can be applied to other specific cases, designs, and applications. Review questions are included with each chapter to stimulate creative thinking and enhance the acquisition of knowledge and design skills. This book is written for engineers, scientists, and technicians seeking practical knowledge on microwave electron devices and their applications through self-study. It is also suitable for use as a college textbook in upper-division courses for seniors and first-year graduate students in electrical engineering.

Biology of Parasitic Spirochaetes

1st Edition
October 22, 2013
Russell C. Johnson
English
eBook
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 8 8 7 1 - 0

Biology of Parasitic Spirochaetes presents the proceedings of the First Symposium on the Biology of the Parasitic Spirochetes. This volume and the symposium from which it arises aims to present an overview and the current information available on the parasitic spirochetes. The etiological agents of the treponematoses, leptospiroses, and the relapsing fevers are discussed by distinguished investigators who provide extensive and sometimes unique knowledge of these bacteria. In addition to providing a valuable resource of information, this volume should reveal the gaps in our knowledge and stimulate interest in some of the neglected areas of spirochetal biology. This volume contains 32 papers organized into eight sections. Section I contains papers on spirochete morphology. Section II presents studies on spirochete cultivation, composition, and physiology. Sections III and IV deal with the classification of the spirochetes and the epidemiology of the spirochetoses, respectively. Section V focuses on laboratory diagnosis of the spirochetoses. Section VI examines the pathogenesis of spirochetal diseases. Section VII takes up immunity and spirochetal diseases while Section VIII covers the treatment and control of the spirochetoses.

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