Performance Psychology


Book Description

This book integrates findings from across domains in performance psychology to focus on core research on what influences peak and non-peak performance. The book explores basic and applied research identifying cognition-action interactions, perception-cognition interactions, emotion-cognition interactions, and perception-action interactions. The book explores performance in sports, music, and the arts both for individuals and teams/groups, looking at the influence of cognition, perception, personality, motivation and drive, attention, stress, coaching, and age. This comprehensive work includes contributions from the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia. - Integrates research findings found across domains in performance psychology - Includes research from sports, music, the arts, and other applied settings - Identifies conflicts between cognition, action, perception, and emotion - Explores influences on both individual and group/team performance - Investigates what impacts peak performance and error production




Intellectual Journeys in Ecological Psychology


Book Description

Intellectual Journeys in Ecological Psychology: Interviews and Reflections from Pioneers in the Field presents 12 in-depth interviews with prominent scientists associated with Ecological Psychology, rooted in James Gibson’s radical approach to perception. Featuring a mix of interviews conducted around the turn of the millennium with leading figures of Ecological Psychology, the book reveals discussions not previously found in publications and authentic personal perspectives about the early days of Ecological Psychology, a significant paradigm of post-cognitivist psychology. The interviews are supplemented by current reflections that bridge the past to the present. Each interview chapter also contains a brief biography of the interviewee and a list of their top ten most significant publications. An introductory chapter by Harry Heft provides an overview of Gibson’s theory and the post-Gibsonian theoretical landscape. A further chapter by the editors highlights lineages and patterns in the scientific careers and work of the interviewees. An epilogue by William Warren concludes the volume, addressing the current state and directions of Ecological Psychology. In the Appendix photographs taken by Sverker Runeson in the 1960s and 1970s show scenes and actors from scientific event in Ecological Psychology. This book will be beneficial to all researchers and students in the international community of Ecological Psychology. It will also serve as a starting point for those who wish to learn more about the movement and origins of Ecological Psychology.




Handbook of Clinical Child Neuropsychology


Book Description

Every chapter has been updated to reflect current thought and research in the field. Chapters devoted to specialized tests in neuropsychology have been updated to reflect new editions of these popular instruments. Special topic chapters have been added such as working in pediatric coma rehabilitation, using the planning, attention, sequential, simultaneous theory of neuropsychological processes, additions on ADHD, and more appear written by the leading experts and practitioners in these fields to reflect the demands of current practice in clinical child neuropsychology.




Multisensory Development


Book Description

We perceive and understand our environment using many sensory systems-vision, touch, hearing, taste, smell, and proprioception. These multiple sensory modalities not only give us complementary sources of information about the environment but also an understanding that is richer and more complex than one modality alone could achieve. As adults, we integrate the multiple signals from these sense organs into unified functional representations. However, the ease with which we accomplish this feat belies its computational complexity. Not only do the senses convey information about the environment in different neural codes, but the relationship between the senses frequently changes when, for example, the body changes posture (e.g. when the eyes move in their sockets), or indeed shape, when the body grows across development. These computational problems prompt an important question which represents the key focus of this book: How do we develop the ability to integrate the senses? While there is a considerable literature on the development of single senses, such as vision or hearing, few books have considered the development of all our senses, and more importantly, how they develop the ability to work with each other. This book is unique in exploring this extraordinary feat of human nature - how we develop the ability to integrate our senses. It will be an important book for all those in the fields of cognitive and developmental neuroscience.




Studying the Perception-Action System as a Model System for Understanding Development


Book Description

Studying the Perception-Action System as a Model System for Understanding Development, Volume 55, the latest release in the Advances in Child Development and Behavior series, includes chapters that highlight some of the most recent research in the field of development of the perception-action system, with an overarching theme of addressing how the development of the perception-action system is a useful model for understanding both typical and atypical development. Chapters in this latest release include discussions of Perception and Action, Exploration and Selection, and the Acquisition of Skills in Infancy, The Development of Object Fitting: The Dynamics of Spatial Coordination, Developmental Pathways of Change in Perceptual-Motor Learning, Timing Is Almost Everything: How Children Perceive and Act on Dynamic Affordances, Vision, Whole Body Coordinations, and the Development of Throwing, Action Errors: A Window into the Early Development of Perception-Action System, Are Different Actions Mediated by Distinct Systems of Knowledge in Infancy and Childhood?, Sensory-Motor Development as a Precursor to Cognition, and A Perception-Action Approach to Those with Developmental Coordination Disorder. - Compiles contributions from leaders in research on the perception-action system - Contains theoretical contributions in the field of developmental psychology - Fills major gap in the literature on this topic




Developmental Psychology


Book Description

Since the end of the sixties, Piagetian general theory with its inherent power of unification has gradually given way to a multitude of more specific models which is in evidence today. In this volume the authors concentrate on three perspectives namely cognitive, perceptuo-motor and neuropsychological development and attempt to coordinate these traditionally separated views. Good illustrations of these theoretical connections can be found in different chapters although the persistent isolation of these three domains still remains. However the authors believe efforts in developmental psychology must continue in the direction of domain interaction, for theoretical concepts as well as methodological tools.




Cognitive Neuropsychology


Book Description

This book gives equal weight to the psychological and neurological approaches to the study of cognitive deficits in patients with brain lesions. The result is an analysis of cognitive skills and abilities that departs from the more usual syndrome approach.




Neuropsychology of Space


Book Description

The Neuropsychology of Space: Spatial Functions of the Human Brain summarizes recent research findings related to understanding the brain mechanisms involved in spatial reasoning, factors that adversely impact spatial reasoning, and the clinical implications of rehabilitating people who have experienced trauma affecting spatial reasoning. This book will appeal to cognitive psychologists, neuropsychologists, and clinical psychologists. Spatial information processing is central to many aspects of cognitive psychology including perception, attention, motor action, memory, reasoning, and communication. Any behavioural task involves mentally computing spaces, mechanics, and timing and many mental tasks may require thinking about these aspects as well (e.g. imaging the route to a destination). - Discusses how spatial processing is central to perception, attention, memory, reasoning, and communication - Identifies the brain architecture and processes involved in spatial processing - Describes theories of spatial processing and how empirical evidence support or refute theories - Includes case studies of neuropsychological disorders to better illustrate theoretical concepts - Provides an applied perspective of how spatial perception acts in the real world - Contains rehabilitation possibilities for spatial function loss




The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology, Vol. 1


Book Description

Research in developmental psychology--which examines the history, origins, and causes of behavior and age-related changes in behavior--seeks to construct a complex, multi-level characterization of behavior as it unfolds in time across a range of time scales, from the milliseconds of reaction time to the days and weeks of childhood, the decades of the human lifespan, and even beyond, to multiple generations. Behavior, in this view, is embedded within what is essentially a dynamic system of relations extending deep within individuals. Thorough and engaging, this handbook explores the impact of this research on what is now known about psychological development, from birth to biological maturity, and it highlights the extent to which the most cutting-edge developmental science reflects a new kind of intellectual synthesis: one that reveals how cultural, social, cognitive, neural, and molecular processes work together to yield human behavior and changes in human behavior. With insightful contributions from more than 50 of the world's leading developmental scientists, these two volumes will serve as an influential and informed text for students and as an authoritative desk reference for years to come.