Review of Computation and cognition: Toward a foundation for cognitive science.

Reviews the book, Computation and cognition: Toward a foundation for cognitive science by Zenon W. Pylyshyn (see record 1986-97211-000). Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of mind based on a computational conception of mind. Computation and cognition is a presentation of Zenon Pylyshyn's position on just what a computational conception of mind is and should be. In the course of the exegesis, the basic, often implicit, assumptions of cognitive science are revealed, and the enterprise as a whole is placed on firm ground. The book is difficult but important. The reviewer cannot recommend it to the intelligent layman. However, it is a book that should be read by cognitive scientists and others with a deep interest in the possibility of a computational view of mind. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Cognition.

Reviews the book, Cognition by John G. Benjafield, et al. (2010). Cognition (4th ed.) provides a comprehensive introduction to cognitive psychology for undergraduate students and others who require an overview of the area. New in the fourth edition is a chapter on cognitive neuroscience. The reviewer only has one criticism of Benjafield et al.: Citations for published works in every chapter that also appeared in the third edition stop around 2007 or earlier (when the third edition was published). Cognition is a book that will appeal to those looking for a high-level, scholarly survey of cognitive psychology. It is this aspect of Cognition that sets it apart from most other textbooks that cover cognitive psychology. Yet, despite its scholarly approach, it remains an engaging text that makes the reader want to keep reading more: a delicate balance, but one that Benjafield et al. manage with aplomb. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Cognition and emotion: From order to disorder, second edition.

Reviews the book, Cognition and emotion: From order to disorder, second edition by Mick Power and Tim Dalgleish (see record 2007-10431-000). In this book, the authors provide a detailed analysis of emotion with an explicit focus on differences and similarities between "disordered" emotion and normative emotional experience. What sets this text apart from other books on cognition and emotion is its attempt to describe the philosophical and historical underpinnings of work on emotion. Another unique feature of this text is that the authors go beyond just describing the various theories of emotion by comparing and contrasting the arguments advanced by the theories and highlighting the strengths and limitations of each theory. This book is divided into two parts: Part 1 is a review of the major theories of emotion, and Part 2 consists of reviews of research on five basic emotions, as well as illustrations of how the SPAARS framework can be used to explain normative and nonnormative variants of these emotions. Power and Dalgleish suggest that readers can choose either to read the book in its entirety or to focus on the sections that are of interest. Overall, this second edition of Cognition and Emotion is a readable and engaging book. This book is not a primer; as noted earlier, some parts of it are conceptually heavy. For this reason, the most appropriate audience for this book is advanced graduate students who already have some background in research on basic emotion or psychopathology and who are looking to enhance their knowledge base. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Cognition as intuitive statistics.

Reviews the book, Cognition as intuitive statistics by Gerd Gigerenzer and David J. Murray (see record 1987-97295-000). Psychologists tend to think of their statistical methods simply as neutral tools. The use of a particular statistical technique is not supposed to influence one's psychological theorizing. Methods and theories are entirely different things, just like facts and theories are quite different. These sharp distinctions are generally accepted as articles of faith. They are not empirically based but are part of the philosophical legacy of positivism which continues to have a strong hold on our discipline. According to this philosophy methods and facts are both supposed to be theory-neutral, so that they can be used to test the claims of rival theories. Now, the post-positivist phase in the philosophy of science has been going on for long enough to have had some effect on the rhetoric, if not on the practice, of psychological investigation. In particular, the distinction between theories and facts is not likely to be insisted upon as dogmatically as it was in the heyday of logical positivism. But the parallel distinction between theories and methods has seldom been explicitly questioned in psychology. Gigerenzer and Murray's book goes a long way towards filling this gap. Their thesis is that after psychologists came to take a specific statistical methodology for granted in their research they began to base their theoretical models of human cognition on the psychologists' own statistical practice. Gigerenzer and Murray illustrate their general thesis by drawing on examples from four areas of psychological research: signal detection theory, perception, memory and thinking. In each case they combine a broad historical account with a detailed critical assessment of some contemporary work. The value of such an approach is that it opens up a refreshing new perspective on the research literature in these fields, making visible fundamental assumptions which normally remain hidden. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The elusive search for the truth: A review of Pezdek, K. and Banks, W. P. (1996). The recovered memory/false memory debate.

Reviews the book, The recovered memory/false memory debate by K. Pezdek and W. P. Banks (see record 1996-98519-000). This book presents a series of articles, some of which are sympathetic to the "recovered" memory approach and others to the "false" memory approach. In the preface, the authors write: "We tried to hew a middle course, looking for value in all sides." Many of the articles in the book originally appeared in a special issue of Consciousness & Cognition, Volume 3, 1994, the journal which is edited by William Banks, one of the editors of this volume. A major strength of the book is that all the included articles argue their respective positions based on actual experimental data rather than on philosophical biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Growing old: The ultimate freedom.

Reviews the book, Growing old: The ultimate freedom by Maxwell Jones (see record 1989-97554-000). Jones has written a small thoughtful book on the problems and possibilities of being old. Growing old, in Jones's view, gives one the freedom to do things that have been sacrificed to the necessities of one's career. Jones knows that one must enjoy a certain standard of living to have the luxury to use old age to search for the meaning of life; many have to occupy their years--the late as well as the early ones--with daily survival. He is also frank about the psychological problems associated with growing old. Jones advocates finding or creating a social network of people with whom one can share deep fears and intellectual passions. Throughout the five chapters of his brief book, Jones emphasizes the need for a supportive network as one confronts the increasing isolation of old age. The significance of this book lies not in the particular preoccupations of Max Jones's own old age, but in his observations that age grants us the freedom to chart the tantalizing wilderness we left aside while we spent our working lives on more immediate problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Humor: The psychology of living buoyantly.

Reviews the book, Humor: The psychology of living buoyantly by Herbert M. Lefcourt (see record 2000-14400-000). Lefcourt traces the changing concerns of psychology, and the reason why the psychological study of humour has often been trivialized as an unlikely candidate for research support in the past. The author charts his own personal odyssey in the field, one in which he is drawn to the study of human strengths rather than human frailties. An early chapter sets us up for the remaining chapters by reminding us how we experience humour in everyday life. Verbatim anecdotes from students in previous seminars offer vignettes which allow the reader to grasp the situation vicariously and to see how and why the humour of the situation could have arisen. It is here that Lefcourt confides that his is a functionalist psychological perspective, and that he views humour as a characteristic that has been useful to our species. Here one comes to the crux of the argument for most readers. Is humour, then, a coping strategy, ultimately devised in our evolutionary ramblings, as a protective cushion against the jagged impact of stressful experiences? The middle part of this book explores this hypothesis in a variety of experimental settings, all designed to assess the moderating role of humour in the face of stress. This is a useful, even uplifting, book about the human search for emotional well-being. Its academic value in outlining the history and current thrust of work in the field of humour is obvious, but this reviewer appreciated its bold attempt to provide a more personal view of human adaptation to life's stressful requirements. Very simply, this is a book that resonates with one's understanding of life beyond the research laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Technology as symptom and dream.

Reviews the book, Technology as symptom and dream by Robert D. Romanyshyn (see record 1990-97140-000). This book is an empassioned call to reexamine the history of technology and to remember the desire that propelled it. Faced with the atom bomb and space flight, we can no longer ignore, Romanyshyn argues, the possibility of the final destruction of our planet. True to his vocation as a psychologist, Romanyshyn finds that the path toward preventing the suicide of mankind lies in re-examining, reflecting and retelling the story of our past and in understanding how it shapes our present and our future. He offers us a shift in perspective: maybe we have misunderstood what technology is all about. "Perhaps technology has been part of the earth's long history of coming to know itself, and perhaps in that effort we have been its servant. (...) On a dry African plain, in the silence of the early morning, one can still imagine technology as vocation, as the earth's call to become its agent and instrument of awakening. But in the shadows imagination falters and technology seems less the earth's way of coming to know itself and more the earth's way of coming to cleanse itself of us" (p. 3). Romanyshyn's book is biased, but biased in a positive way: he refuses the detached view of the uninvolved observer. The book speaks with passionate insight for the abandoned body and the repressed soul. Informed by the phenomenological critique of the scientific attitude, Romanyshyn attempts to recover the cultural history of consciousness and the lived body. He weaves a fascinating story that resonates with profound echoes from the past. He challenges the reader's presuppositions and our habitual modern ways of conceptualizing space, body and self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The abusive personality: Violence and control in intimate relationships.

Reviews the book, The abusive personality: Violence and control in intimate relationships by Donald G. Dutton (see record 1998-06084-000). Having devoted much of his career to the study of men who abuse their wives, Donald Dutton is unquestionably well qualified to write this book. Through his extensive research on the topic and his hands-on experience with men who batter, he has gained valuable insights into these and other men. In the late 1970s, when my colleagues and I were planning a study on applying social learning theory to the reduction of violence, Don Dutton was one of the few people who had already made headway in that area, and his ideas about how to apply psychological knowledge were formative in our early efforts. Since that early work, Dutton's ideas have evolved based on where his research results led him, and that journey is the story told in this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Statistical reflections of researchers and their subjects.

Reviews the book, Cognition as intuitive statistics by Gerd Gigerenzer and David J. Murray (1987). The main thesis of the work is that the statistical tools that we use as researchers to evaluate the data that we collect have become projected into our subjects as models of their minds. The authors take an historical perspective to evaluate this hypothesis. They trace the development of inferential statistical methods as well as their use by experimental psychologists and concurrently trace the development of theories of how the subject's mind uses these same inferential statistical procedures to make decisions. The authors find that the latter theories supervene on the development of the earlier tools. Overall, this book provides psychologists with an opportunity to view their own irrationalities in a self-critical way not typically available in our profession. The book provides a fine critical, historical survey of how one tool--statistics--came to dominate our thinking so that it biases our theoretical perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Creativity: Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice.

Reviews the book, Creativity: Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice by Mark A. Runco (see record 2007-00543-000). This book consists of 11 chapters with the following titles: "Cognition and Creativity," "Developmental Trends and Influences on Creativity," "Biological Perspectives on Creativity," "Health and Clinical Perspectives," "Social, Attributional, and Organizational Perspectives," "Educational Perspectives," "History and Historiometry," "Culture and Creativity," "Personality and Motivation," "Enhancement and the Fulfillment of Potential," and "Conclusion: What Creativity Is and What It Is Not." Beyond this all-encompassing content, the volume is crammed with illustrations and with all those "boxes" that are so characteristic of introductory textbooks in psychology. Each chapter also begins with appropriate quotations and a didactic "Advanced Organizer." Finally, Runco closes with 63 pages of references and a 15-page subject index. The reviewer has one major complaint: Runco seems to have adopted an "open the floodgates" approach that sometimes results in the almost willy nilly insertion of ideas and material. One consequence of this tendency is that the illustrations and boxes are at times less useful than they ought to be. Another repercussion of Runco's leave-nothing-out approach is that it occasionally leads to the presentation of ideas with minimal if any discussion or commentary. The reviewer does assert though, that for someone in the market for a text for use in an introductory creativity course, a book that is wide-ranging and most current, Runco's Creativity is a good choice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aristotle vindicated.

Reviews the book, Behavior and mind: The roots of modern psychology by Howard Rachlin (see record 1993-99016-000). There is an important story about causality in psychology that needs to be told. It is a story which was once well told and widely understood during the Hellenic era, but a number of influential forces in our culture have conspired since then to sweep this story into a dark corner of our intellectual warehouse. In recent centuries, this story has been retrieved from its corner only rarely, and then it has been interpreted in a manner both unnatural to its originators and uncongenial to modern scientists. Authentic reconstructions of this story regarding causes and their effects began to re-emerge in the second half of the twentieth century among biologists and physicists, but it is still rarely heard in psychology. Rachlin's new book, however, tells this story as one of the central themes of the narrative. For this, if for no other reason, this is a book that should be read and carefully considered by all psychologists. The story alluded to is generally called "teleology," and it received its first full treatment by Aristotle in the fourth century before the Christian era. Rachlin delineates these origins, traces them carefully to the present day and develops a persuasive argument for the value and significance of this story for any complete psychological science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research.

Reviews the book, Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research by Kurt Danziger (1990). Kurt Danziger's Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research is a book of singular importance because it provides such a penetrating analysis, and does so in a manner that is cause for considerable reflection. In brief, Danziger provides a history lesson that not only situates the names and the projects of experimental psychology in the first part of this century, but also aims to clarify the project of knowledge generation both past and present. Indeed, shades of Quine, Kuhn, and Hesse permeate this book in a way that demands psychologists examine their own investigative practices and logics of justification. Through Wundt, through Galton, through Ebbinghaus and others, Danziger illuminates the development of experimental psychology along with the historical and philosophical vicissitudes that have given rise to numerous psychological knowledge claims. If it is true that we must understand our history in order to understand our present, then Danziger's book should be required reading in all research laboratories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Fear of contamination: Assessment and treatment.

Reviews the book, Fear of Contamination: Assessment and Treatment by Stanley Rachman (2006). As a renowned expert on obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Professor Rachman's contributions have shaped current psychological theory, research, and treatment of OCD more than any other contemporary psychologist. The current book, Fear of Contamination, adopts the author's current emphasis on fine-grained analyses of OCD, digging deep into the unique phenomenology of specific obsessional concerns. Based on his prior cognitive formulations for obsessions, Dr. Rachman's present book proposes a new cognitive-behavioural model for another OCD subgroup that has been neglected in recent years, those with fears of contamination. It begins with a convincing argument for taking a fresh look at our understanding and treatment of contamination OCD. Throughout the remainder of the book, the author provides a fascinating and highly innovative analysis of contamination fears. Fear of Contamination is a well-written, authoritative, and innovative treatment manual for disease and contamination fears that is sure to set a new standard for research and treatment of this disorder. It is probably the most important book published in the last few decades on this particular subtype of OCD and it promises to stimulate our research and invigorate our treatment of this rather intransigent fear. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Economics and psychology: A promising new cross-disciplinary field.

Reviews the book, Economics and psychology: A promising new cross-disciplinary field edited by Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer (see record 2007-00637-000). The editors' goal in this book was to review some recent applications of psychological theories in the field of economics. Given economics' high reliance on agency theory, this book provides a fresh look into what standard economics has had a difficult time explaining: what economists have called "errors" in individual behaviour and decision making. The gist of the book focuses on showing that these errors are in fact part of the human make-up, and the contributors use psychological theories and evidence to build a new economics paradigm. The book purports to question the assumption of the human as a rational being, to show the value of experimental methods in economics, and to make well-being a worthy outcome in economics. This book is of interest to economists who have an interest in microeconomics and want to break free from the narrow focus of agency theory. It is also of interest to psychologists who want to extend their work on prosocial behaviour and well-being to include economic and institutional considerations as part of their accounts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Cognitive development in atypical children: Progress in cognitive development research.

Reviews the book, Cognitive development in atypical children: Progress in cognitive development research edited by Linda S. Siegel and Frederick J. Morrison (1985). A great deal of psychological research in the past decade has focused on the topic of cognitive development. Accordingly, there are now whole volumes devoted to this subject, such as the Springer Series in Cognitive Development, of which this book, edited by Siegel and Morrison, is one. The term "Progress" in the titles of some of the volumes in the Springer Series denotes that these volumes are "strongly thematic, in that [they are] limited to some well-defined domain of cognitive development research." The theme for this particular book is that of atypical cognitive development, with the term encompassing disorders such as reading disability, autism, and hyperactivity. The book contains seven chapters: three on reading disability, two on autism, one on temperament and attention, and one on atypical infant development. Although the individual chapters in this book are interesting and informative, as is often the case with an edited volume, this book is less cohesive than one might hope. The book is part of a series that is intended to be "strongly thematic." In my view, it does not quite succeed in this regard. Presumably the unifying theme of this book is one of cognitive development in special populations; however, the populations chosen are quite diverse so that the reader often loses sight of the theme. Although this volume could presumably serve as a text for a course in atypical cognitive development, my general feeling is that the material presented varies awkwardly from an introductory to an advanced level, a range that makes it not quite appropriate for either an introductory or an advanced course in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Understanding America's drinking problem: How to combat the hazards of alcohol.

Reviews the book, Understanding America's drinking problem: How to combat the hazards of alcohol by Don Cahalan (see record 1987-98459-000). This book is a systems level analysis of alcohol use and alcohol-related problems, with much of the focus on governmental and private efforts to control alcohol and those of the alcohol beverage industry to increase consumption and avoid regulation. A major theme of the book is that this industry, through lobbying, campaign contributions, and other tactics, has thwarted attempts to impose regulations on the marketing, advertising, and use of alcohol. The book provides an overview of important issues and some thought-provoking suggestions. It is, however, the person who has not been exposed to systems analysis, primary prevention, public policy development, and the role of political factors in the fight against alcohol-related problems who might gain the most from the book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Pain: psychological perspectives.

Reviews the book, Pain: psychological perspectives edited by S. Rachman and Jack D. Maser (see record 1988-97293-000). The success of this book lies in its focus on the symptom of panic rather than on the diagnosis of panic disorder. The three main psychological theories discussed in the book are: (a) Clark's cognitive theory of panic, which postulates that panic attacks result from the catastrophic misinterpretations of bodily sensations; (b) van den Hout's Pavlovian theory of panic, which postulates that bodily sensations such as heart palpitations become conditioned stimuli for panic attacks through the temporal contiguity of these stimuli with the first spontaneous panic attack; and (c) Lang's information processing theory, which Lang discusses in relation to phobias but, unfortunately, not to any appreciable extent in relation to panic. Each theory is clearly presented in one of three chapters, each of which is written by the originator of the theory. I hope that this book will get a wide readership. It would act as a stimulant in senior undergraduate and graduate courses. I hope also that it will convince psychopathologists of the value of the symptom-approach in research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Psychological Assessment of Mental and Physical Handicaps.

Reviews the book, The Psychological Assessment of Mental and Physical Handicaps by Peter Mittler (see record 1971-06406-000). A single book on the psychological assessment of mental and physical handicaps of both adults and children ought, on the face of it, to be impossible. However, this book was written by thirty individuals who live and work within close proximity to one another. While an uncomfortable degree of uniformity of approach has resulted, so has a good degree of internal consistency. Thus, the book holds together quite well and presents a viewpoint which is sometimes overlooked in Canada in the face of the deluge of United States textbooks. Mittler's encyclopaedic chapters range from the very weak to the very strong. While the book is too expensive for individual purchase, in most cases, it does make a valuable library reference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)