Experimental Slips And Human Error

Experimental Slips and Human Error

Whereas most humans spend their time trying to get things right, psycholo gists are perversely dedicated to error. Errors are extensively used to in vestigate perception, memory, and performance; some clinicians study errors like tea leaves for clues to unconscious motives; and this volume presents the work of researchers who, in an excess of perversity, actually cause people to make predictable errors in speech and action. Some reasons for this oddity are clear. Errors seem to stand at the nexus of many deep-psychological questions. The very concept of error presupposes a goal or criterion by comparison to which an error is an error; and goals bring in the foundation issues of control, motivation, and volition (Baars, 1987, 1988; Wiener, 1961). Errors serve to measure the quality of performance in learning, in expert knowledge, and in brain damage and other dysfunctional states; and by surprising us, they often call attention to phenomena we might otherwise take for granted. Errors also seem to reveal the "natural joints" in perception, language, memory, and problem solving-revealing units that may otherwise be invisible (e. g. , MacKay, 1981; Miller, 1956; Newell & Simon, 1972; Treisman & Gelade, 1980).

Experimental Slips and Human Error

The Nature of Consciousness

Intended for anyone attempting to find their way through the large and confusingly interwoven philosophical literature on consciousness, this reader brings together most of the principal texts in philosophy (and a small set of related key works in neuropsychology) on consciousness through 1997, and includes some forthcoming articles. Its extensive coverage strikes a balance between seminal works of the past few decades and the leading edge of philosophical research on consciousness.As no other anthology currently does, The Nature of Consciousness provides a substantial introduction to the field, and imposes structure on a vast and complicated literature, with sections covering stream of consciousness, theoretical issues, consciousness and representation, the function of consciousness, subjectivity and the explanatory gap, the knowledge argument, qualia, and monitoring conceptions of consciousness. Of the 49 contributions, 18 are either new or have been adapted from a previous publication.