Handbook Of Learning And Cognitive Processes Introduction To Concepts And Ideas

Handbook of Learning and Cognitive Processes: Introduction to concepts and ideas

Handbook of Learning and Cognitive Processes (Volume 1)

From the Foreword: "Is it possible at present to identify a core cluster of theoretical ideas, concepts, and methods with which everyone working in the area of learning and cognition needs to be familiar? Would it be possible to make explicit the relationships that we feel do or must exist among the various subspecialties, ranging from conditioning through perceptual learning and memory to psycholinguistics, and to present these in a sufficiently organized way to help specialists and non-specialists alike in relating particular lines of research to the broader spectrum of activity? These questions were posed to a substantial number of investigators who are currently most active in developing the ideas and doing the research. Their response constitutes this Handbook..." First published in 1975, Volume 1 of this Handbook attempts to present an overview of the field and to introduce the principal theoretical and methodological issues that will persistently recur in the expanded treatments of specific research areas that comprise the later volumes. Deferring to the current Zeitgeist rather than to chronology, they begin with the present state of cognitive psychology, then introduce the comparative approach, and conclude this volume with a rapid, three-chapter review of the evolution of ideas from conditioning to information processing.

The Big Book of Concepts

Concepts embody our knowledge of the kinds of things there are in the world. Tying our past experiences to our present interactions with the environment, they enable us to recognize and understand new objects and events. Concepts are also relevant to understanding domains such as social situations, personality types, and even artistic styles. Yet like other phenomenologically simple cognitive processes such as walking or understanding speech, concept formation and use are maddeningly complex. Research since the 1970s and the decline of the "classical view" of concepts have greatly illuminated the psychology of concepts. But persistent theoretical disputes have sometimes obscured this progress. The Big Book of Concepts goes beyond those disputes to reveal the advances that have been made, focusing on the major empirical discoveries. By reviewing and evaluating research on diverse topics such as category learning, word meaning, conceptual development in infants and children, and the basic level of categorization, the book develops a much broader range of criteria than is usual for evaluating theories of concepts.