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Author: Alison Gopnik
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262571269
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
Words, Thoughts, and Theories articulates and defends the "theory theory" of cognitive and semantic development, the idea that infants and young children, like scientists, learn about the world by forming and revising theories, a view of the origins of knowledge and meaning that has broad implications for cognitive science. Gopnik and Meltzoff interweave philosophical arguments and empirical data from their own and other's research. Both the philosophy and the psychology, the arguments and the data, address the same fundamental epistemological question: How do we come to understand the world around us? Recently, the theory theory has led to much interesting research. However, this is the first book to look at the theory in extensive detail and to systematically contrast it with other theories. It is also the first to apply the theory to infancy and early childhood, to use the theory to provide a framework for understanding semantic development, and to demonstrate that language acquisition influences theory change in children.The authors show that children just beginning to talk are engaged in profound restructurings of several domains of knowledge. These restructurings are similar to theory changes in science, and they influence children's early semantic development, since children's cognitive concerns shape and motivate their use of very early words. But, in addition, children pay attention to the language they hear around them and this too reshapes their cognition, and causes them to reorganize their theories.
Author: Alison Gopnik
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262571269
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Get Book Here
Book Description
Words, Thoughts, and Theories articulates and defends the "theory theory" of cognitive and semantic development, the idea that infants and young children, like scientists, learn about the world by forming and revising theories, a view of the origins of knowledge and meaning that has broad implications for cognitive science. Gopnik and Meltzoff interweave philosophical arguments and empirical data from their own and other's research. Both the philosophy and the psychology, the arguments and the data, address the same fundamental epistemological question: How do we come to understand the world around us? Recently, the theory theory has led to much interesting research. However, this is the first book to look at the theory in extensive detail and to systematically contrast it with other theories. It is also the first to apply the theory to infancy and early childhood, to use the theory to provide a framework for understanding semantic development, and to demonstrate that language acquisition influences theory change in children.The authors show that children just beginning to talk are engaged in profound restructurings of several domains of knowledge. These restructurings are similar to theory changes in science, and they influence children's early semantic development, since children's cognitive concerns shape and motivate their use of very early words. But, in addition, children pay attention to the language they hear around them and this too reshapes their cognition, and causes them to reorganize their theories.
Author: Frank C. Keil
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262112499
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
These essays address basic questions about explanation: how do explanatory capacities develop, are there kinds of explanation do explanations correspond to domains of knowledge, why do we seek explanations, and how central are causes to explanation?
Author: Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262313286
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
A proposal that human social cognition would not have evolved without mechanisms and practices that shape minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. In this novel account of distinctively human social cognition, Tadeusz Zawidzki argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse, and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. Zawidzki proposes that such "mindshaping"—which takes the form of capacities and practices such as sophisticated imitation, pedagogy, conformity to norms, and narrative self-constitution—is the most important component of human social cognition. Without it, he argues, none of the other components of what he terms the "human sociocognitive syndrome," including sophisticated language, cooperation, and sophisticated "mindreading," would be possible. Challenging the dominant view that sophisticated mindreading—especially propositional attitude attribution—is the key evolutionary innovation behind distinctively human social cognition, Zawidzki contends that the capacity to attribute such mental states depends on the evolution of mindshaping practices. Propositional attitude attribution, he argues, is likely to be unreliable unless most of us are shaped to have similar kinds of propositional attitudes in similar circumstances. Motivations to mindshape, selected to make sophisticated cooperation possible, combine with low-level mindreading abilities that we share with nonhuman species to make it easier for humans to interpret and anticipate each other's behavior. Eventually, this led, in human prehistory, to the capacity to attribute full-blown propositional attitudes accurately—a capacity that is parasitic, in phylogeny and today, on prior capacities to shape minds. Bringing together findings from developmental psychology, comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy of psychology, Zawidzki offers a strikingly original framework for understanding human social cognition.
Author: Paul Fairfield
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0826426832
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
Philosophical hermeneutics has rich implications for the theory and practice of education, yet the topic has often been ignored. Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics takes a variety of principles and themes from philosophical hermeneutics, drawing on insights from major figures such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, and applies them to issues in education and the philosophy of education. Topics covered include the relevance and nature of dialogue and understanding in an educational setting, the nature of educational experience and the concept of Bildung, narrative and tradition.Timely and original, Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics draws together eight original chapters written by leading scholars in the field of hermeneutics.
Author: J. Gavin Bremner
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405142944
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 792
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Book Description
This up-to-date overview of the fast-moving field of infant development covers all the major areas of interest in terms of research, applications and policy. Provides an up-to-date overview of progress on important developmental questions relating to infancy. Balances North American and European perspective. Written by leading international researchers. Now available in full text online via xreferplus, the award-winning reference library on the web from xrefer. For more information, visit www.xreferplus.com
Author: Lawrence M. Zbikowski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199881588
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
This book shows how recent work in cognitive science, especially that developed by cognitive linguists and cognitive psychologists, can be used to explain how we understand music. The book focuses on three cognitive processes--categorization, cross-domain mapping, and the use of conceptual models--and explores the part these play in theories of musical organization. The first part of the book provides a detailed overview of the relevant work in cognitive science, framed around specific musical examples. The second part brings this perspective to bear on a number of issues with which music scholarship has often been occupied, including the emergence of musical syntax and its relationship to musical semiosis, the problem of musical ontology, the relationship between words and music in songs, and conceptions of musical form and musical hierarchy. The book will be of interest to music theorists, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists, as well as those with a professional or avocational interest in the application of work in cognitive science to humanistic principles.
Author: Clive Sutton
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 0335232914
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
Despite the power of words to move minds, appreciating the written or spoken word is rarely thought to be the essence of teaching and learning science and much more effort goes into organizing practical work. There is an exaggerated confidence in the value of the direct experience of things as opposed to "mere words", and a corresponding neglect of how words are actually involved in developing anyone's scientific understanding. Clive Sutton does not wish to deny the value of first hand scientific understanding, and shows that they cannot just be taken for granted while we busy ourselves in the organization of practical work. He explores the role of language in the growth of science itself, in the growth of learners' ideas, and in classroom practice; and how these relate, for instance, to some pupils' alienation from science and the isolation of science in the curriculum.
Author: Peter Carruthers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190292628
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 442
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Book Description
This is the first volume of a projected three-volume set on the subject of innateness. The extent to which the mind is innate is one of the central questions in the human sciences, with important implications for many surrounding debates. By bringing together the top nativist scholars in philosophy, psychology, and allied disciplines these volumes provide a comprehensive assessment of nativist thought and a definitive reference point for future nativist inquiry. The Innate Mind: Structure and Content, concerns the fundamental architecture of the mind, addressing such question as: What capacities, processes, representations, biases, and connections are innate? How do these innate elements feed into a story about the development of our mature cognitive capacities, and which of them are shared with other members of the animal kingdom? The editors have provided an introduction giving some of the background to debates about innateness and introducing each of the subsequent essays, as well as a consolidated bibliography that will be a valuable reference resource for all those interested in this area. The volume will be of great importance to all researchers and students interested in the fundamental nature and powers of the human mind. Together, the three volumes in the series will provide the most intensive and richly cross-disciplinary investigation of nativism ever undertaken. They point the way toward a synthesis of nativist work that promises to provide a new understanding of our minds and their place in the natural order.
Author: Daniel D. Hutto
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263173
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 371
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Book Description
An argument that challenges the dominant "theory theory" and simulation theory approaches to folk psychology by claiming that our everyday understanding of intentional actions done for reasons is acquired by exposure to and engaging in specific kinds of narratives. Established wisdom in cognitive science holds that the everyday folk psychological abilities of humans—our capacity to understand intentional actions performed for reasons—are inherited from our evolutionary forebears. In Folk Psychological Narratives, Daniel Hutto challenges this view (held in somewhat different forms by the two dominant approaches, "theory theory" and simulation theory) and argues for the sociocultural basis of this familiar ability. He makes a detailed case for the idea that the way we make sense of intentional actions essentially involves the construction of narratives about particular persons. Moreover he argues that children acquire this practical skill only by being exposed to and engaging in a distinctive kind of narrative practice. Hutto calls this developmental proposal the narrative practice hypothesis (NPH). Its core claim is that direct encounters with stories about persons who act for reasons (that is, folk psychological narratives) supply children with both the basic structure of folk psychology and the norm-governed possibilities for wielding it in practice. In making a strong case for the as yet underexamined idea that our understanding of reasons may be socioculturally grounded, Hutto not only advances and explicates the claims of the NPH, but he also challenges certain widely held assumptions. In this way, Folk Psychological Narratives both clears conceptual space around the dominant approaches for an alternative and offers a groundbreaking proposal.
Author: Gordon B. Moskowitz
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135664250
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 495
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Book Description
A comprehensive overview of the mechanisms involved in how cognitive processes determine thought and behavior toward the social world, Cognitive Social Psychology: *examines cognition as a motivated process wherein cognition and motivation are seen as intertwined; * reviews the latest research on stereotyping, prejudice, and the ability to control these phenomena--invaluable information to managers who need to prevent against bias in the workplace; and *provides a current analysis of classic problems/issues in social psychology, such as cognitive dissonance, the fundamental attribution error, social identity, stereotyping, social comparison, heuristic processing, the self-concept, assimilation and contrast effects, and goal pursuit. Intended for psychology and management students, as well as social, cognitive, and industrial/organizational psychologists in both academic and applied settings. This new book is also an ideal text for courses in social cognition due to its cohesive structure.
