Space and Sense

• By Susanna Millar

How do we perceive the space around us, locate objects within it, and make our way through it? What do the senses contribute?

This book focuses on touch in order to examine which aspects of vision and touch overlap in spatial processing. It argues that spatial processing depends crucially on integrating diverse sensory inputs as reference cues for the location, distance or direction response that spatial tasks demand. Space and Sense shows how perception by touch, as by vision, can be helped by external reference cues, and that ‘visual’ illusions that are also found in touch depend on common factors and do not occur by chance.

Susanna Millar presents new evidence on the role of spatial cues in touch and movement both with and without vision, and discusses the interaction of both touch and movement with vision in spatial tasks. The book shows how perception by touch, as by vision, can be helped by external reference cues, and that ‘visual’ illusions that are also found in touch depend on common factors and do not occur by chance. It challenges traditional views of explicit external reference cues, showing that they can improve spatial recall with inputs from touch and movement, contrary to the held belief.

Space and Sense provides empirical evidence for an important distinction between spatial vision and vision that excludes spatial cues in relation to touch. This important new volume extends previous descriptions of bimodal effects in vision and space.

Published April 7th 2008 by Psychology Press.

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Hypothetical Thinking

Dual Processes in Reasoning and Judgement

• By Jonathan St. B. T. Evans

Hypothetical thought involves the imagination of possibilities and the exploration of their consequences by a process of mental simulation. Using a recently developed theoretical framework called Hypothetical Thinking Theory, Jonathan St. B. T. Evans provides an integrated theoretical account of a wide range of psychological studies on hypothesis testing, reasoning, judgement and decision making.

Hypothetical thinking theory is built on three key principles, implemented in a revised and updated version of Evans' well-known heuristic–analytic theory of reasoning. The central claim of this book is that this theory can provide an integrated account of some apparently very diverse phenomena including confirmation bias in hypothesis testing, acceptance of fallacies in deductive reasoning, belief biases in reasoning and judgement, biases of statistical judgement and a number of characteristic findings in the study of decision making. The author also provides broad ranging discussion of cognitive biases, human rationality and dual-process theories of higher cognition.

Hypothetical Thinking draws on and develops arguments first proposed in Evans’ earlier work from this series, Bias in Human Reasoning. In the new theory, however, cognitive biases are attributed equally to analytic and heuristic processing and a much wider range of phenomena are reviewed and discussed. It will therefore be of great interest to researchers and post-graduates in psychology and the cognitive sciences, as well as to undergraduate students looking for a comprehensive review of current work on reasoning and decision-making.

Published May 17th 2007 by Psychology Press.

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Associative Illusions of Memory

False Memory Research in DRM and Related Tasks

• By David Gallo

The last decade has seen a flurry of experimental research into the neurocognitive underpinnings of illusory memories. Using simple materials and tests (e.g., recalling words or pictures), methods such as the famed Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task have attracted considerable attention. These tasks elicit false memories of nonstudied events that are vivid, long lasting, and difficult to consciously avoid. Additional research shows that these memory illusions are fundamentally related to more complex memory distortions. As a result, this rapidly expanding literature has generated a great deal of excitement - and even some controversy - in contemporary psychology.

Associative Illusions of Memory provides an ambitious overview of this research area. Starting with the historical roots and major theoretical trends, this book exhaustively reviews the most recent studies by cognitive psychologists, neuropsychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. The strengths and limits of various experimental techniques are outlined, and the large body of existing data is meaningfully distilled into a few core theoretical concepts.

This book highlights the malleability of memory, as well as the strategies and situations that can help us avoid false memories. Throughout the review, it is argued that these basic memory illusions contribute to a deeper understanding of how human memory works.

Published August 28th 2006 by Psychology Press.

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Working Memory Capacity

• By Nelson Cowan

This groundbreaking book explains the evidence supporting Cowan's theoretical proposal about working memory capacity, and compares it to competing perspectives. Cognitive psychologists profoundly disagree on how working memory is limited: whether by the number of units that can be retained (and, if so, what kind of units and how many?), the types of interfering material, the time that has elapsed, some combination of these mechanisms, or none of them. The book assesses these hypotheses and examines explanations of why capacity limits occur, including vivid biological, cognitive, and evolutionary accounts. The book concludes with a discussion of the practical importance of capacity limits in daily life.

Published September 16th 2005 by Psychology Press.

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Semantic Priming

Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition

• By Timothy P. McNamara

Semantic priming has been a focus of research in the cognitive sciences for more than thirty years and is commonly used as a tool for investigating other aspects of perception and cognition, such as word recognition, language comprehension, and knowledge representations. Semantic Priming: Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition examines empirical and theoretical advancements in the understanding of semantic priming, providing a succinct, in-depth review of this important phenomenon, framed in terms of models of memory and models of word recognition.
The first section examines models of semantic priming, including spreading activation models, the verification model, compound-cue models, distributed network models, and multistage activation models (e.g. interactive-activation model).
The second section examines issues and findings that have played an especially important role in testing models of priming and includes chapters on the following topics: methodological issues (e.g. counterbalancing of materials, choice of priming baselines); automatic vs. strategic priming; associative vs. “pure” semantic priming; mediated priming; long-term semantic priming; backward priming; unconscious priming; the prime-task effect; list context effects; effects of word frequency, stimulus quality, and stimulus repetition; and the cognitive neuroscience of semantic priming.
The book closes with a summary and a discussion of promising new research directions.
The volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and students in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences.

Published July 28th 2005 by Psychology Press.

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The Deja Vu Experience

• By Alan S. Brown

Most of us have been perplexed by a strange sense of familiarity when doing something for the first time. We feel that we have been here before, or done this before, but know for sure that this is impossible. In fact, according to numerous surveys, about two-thirds of us have experienced déjà vu at least once, and most of us have had multiple experiences.

There are a number of credible scientific interpretations of déjà vu, and this book summarizes the broad range of published work from philosophy, religion, neurology, sociology, memory, perception, psychopathology, and psychopharmacology. This book also includes discussion of cognitive functioning in retrieval and familiarity, neuronal transmission, and double perception during the déjà vu experience.

Published May 20th 2004 by Psychology Press.

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Saying, Seeing and Acting

The Psychological Semantics of Spatial Prepositions

• By Kenny R. Coventry, Simon C. Garrod

Our use of spatial prepositions carries an implicit understanding of the functional relationships both between objects themselves and human interaction with those objects.
This is the thesis rigorously explicated in Saying, Seeing and Acting. It aims to account not only for our theoretical comprehension of spatial relations but our ability to intercede with efficacy in the world of spatially related objects. Only the phenomenon of functionality can adequately account for what even the simplest of everyday experiences show to be the technically problematic, but still meaningful status of expressions of spatial location in contentious cases.
The terms of the debate are established and contextualised in Part One. In the Second Section, systematic experimental evidence is drawn upon to demonstrate specific covariances between spatial world and spatial language. The authors go on to give an original account of the functional and geometric constraints on which comprehension and human action among spatially related objects is based. Part Three looks at the interaction of these constraints to create a truly dynamic functional geometric framework for the meaningful use of spatial prepositions.
Fascinating to anyone whose work touches on psycholinguistics, this book represents a thorough and incisive contribution to debates in the cognitive psychology of language.

Published February 5th 2004 by Psychology Press.

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Space, Objects, Minds and Brains

• By Lynn C. Robertson

Lynn Robertson has been studying how brain lesions affect spatial abilities for over 20 years, and her work has revealed some surprising facts about space and its role in visual perception. In this book she combines evidence collected in her laboratory with findings from others to explore the cognitive and neural basis of spatial representations and their contributions to spatial awareness, object formation, attention, and binding.

Published October 17th 2003 by Psychology Press.

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Visuo-spatial Working Memory and Individual Differences

• By Cesare Cornoldi, Tomaso Vecchi

In this timely and comprehensive text, Cesare Cornoldi and Tomaso Vecchi describe their recently developed experimental approach to the investigation of visuo-spatial cognition, based upon the analysis of individual differences.
A review of the most influential theoretical advances in the study of visuo-spatial cognition is presented, including both critical analysis and comparisons between the distinct approaches. In addition, the authors describe recent research into memory for spatial configurations, mental manipulation and the active integration of visuo-spatial information. This includes studies on the effects of congenital blindness on mental imagery abilities, developmental and age-related modifications, gender effects, and the role of genetic syndromes in determining visuo-spatial abilities. The authors draw together these distinct areas of research and integrate the findings within an innovative framework of working memory.
This text will be a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychology, as well as researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and neuroscience.

Published April 10th 2003 by Psychology Press.

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The Creativity Conundrum

A Propulsion Model of Kinds of Creative Contributions

• By Robert J. Sternberg, James C. Kaufman, Jean E. Pretz

This book challenges traditional notions of creativity as a trait, and brings forward ideas of multiple types of creativity, along with the possibility of development of creativity.

Published March 1st 2002 by Psychology Press.

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Hypothesis-testing Behaviour

• By Fenna H. Poletiek

How do people search evidence for a hypothesis? A well documented answer in cognitive psychology is that they search for confirming evidence. However, the rational strategy is to try to falsify the hypothesis. This book critically evaluates this contradiction. Experimental research is discussed against the background of philosophical and formal theories of hypothesis testing with striking results: Falsificationism and verificationism - the two main rival philosophies of testing - come down to one and the same principle for concrete testing behaviour, eluding the contrast between rational falsification and confirmation bias.
In this book, the author proposes a new perspective for describing hypothesis testing behaviour - the probability-value model - which unifies the contrasting views. According to this model, hypothesis testers pragmatically consider what evidence and how much evidence will convince them to reject or accept the hypothesis. They might either require highly probative evidence for its acceptance, at the risk of its rejection, or protect it against rejection and go for minor confirming observations. Interestingly, the model refines the classical opposition between rationality and pragmaticity because pragmatic considerations are a legitimate aspect of 'rational' hypothesis testing. Possible future research and applications of the ideas advanced are discussed, such as the modelling of expert hypothesis testing.

Published December 14th 2000 by Psychology Press.

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Mental Models and the Interpretation of Anaphora

• By Alan Garnham

The interpretation of anaphora - how we interpret expressions such as definite pronouns (he, she, it) and verbal elliptical phrases (such as "did so, too") in the course of ordinary conversation or reading - is an important aspect of language comprehension.
In this book the author examines the research and evidence on anaphor interpretation within the context of the mental models theory of comprehension, arguing that the notion of a mental model is essential to the detailed description of the processes of anaphor resolution. The general philosophy of the mental models approach and the nature of mental models themselves and their role in language processing is discussed, followed by a review of methodological issues that bear on the interpretation of psychological research findings. Against this background, the author's own research on areas such as deep and surface anaphora, reference into anaphoric islands, the role of implicit causality in anaphor resolution and the use of pronouns to refer to characters introduced by stereotyped role names is presented.
At all times the author's research is set within the context of the general literature on anaphor resolution derived from the disciplines of linguistics, psycholinguistics, philosophy and computational linguistics, ensuring that the book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in these fields.

Published November 9th 2000 by Psychology Press.

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Rationality and Reasoning

• By Jonathon St. B.T. Evans, David E. Over

This book addresses an apparent paradox in the psychology of thinking. On the one hand, human beings are a highly successful species. On the other, intelligent adults are known to exhibit numerous errors and biases in laboratory studies of reasoning and decision making. There has been much debate among both philosophers and psychologists about the implications of such studies for human rationality. The authors argue that this debate is marked by a confusion between two distinct notions: (a) personal rationality (rationality1
Evans and Over argue that people have a high degree of rationality1 but only a limited capacity for rationality2. The book re-interprets the psychological literature on reasoning and decision making, showing that many normative errors, by abstract standards, reflect the operation of processes that would normally help to achieve ordinary goals. Topics discussed include relevance effects in reasoning and decision making, the influence of prior beliefs on thinking, and the argument that apparently non-logical reasoning can reflect efficient decision making. The authors also discuss the problem of deductive competence - whether people have it, and what mechanism can account for it.
As the book progresses, increasing emphasis is given to the authors' dual process theory of thinking, in which a distinction between tacit and explicit cognitive systems is developed. It is argued that much of human capacity for rationality1 is invested in tacit cognitive processes, which reflect both innate mechanisms and biologically constrained learning. However, the authors go on to argue that human beings also possess an explicit thinking system, which underlies their unique - if limited - capacity to be rational.

Published June 17th 1999 by Psychology Press.

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Superior Memory

• By Elizabeth Valentine, John Wilding

This book examines the nature and causal antecedents of superior memory performance. The main theme is that such performance may depend on either specific memory techniques or natural superiority in the efficiency of one or more memory processes.
Chapter 2 surveys current views about the structure of memory and discusses whether common processes can be identified which might underlie general variation in memory ability, or whether distinct memory subsystems exist, the efficiency of which varies independently of each other.
Chapter 3 provides a comprehensive survey of existing evidence on superior memory performance. It examines techniques which underlie many examples of unusual memory performance, and concludes that not all this evidence is explicable in terms of such techniques. Relations between memory ability and other cognitive processes are also discussed.
The remainder of the book describes the authors' own studies of a dozen memory experts, employing a wide variety of short- and long-term memory tasks. These studies provide a much larger body of data than previously available from studies of single individuals, usually restricted to a narrow range of tasks and rarely involving any systematic study of long-term retention.
The authors argue that in some cases unusual memory ability is not dependent on the use of special techniques. They develop some objective criteria for distinguishing between subjects who demonstrate "natural" superiority and those "strategists" who depend on techniques. Natural superiority was characterised by superior performance on a wider range of tasks and better long-term retention.
The existence of a general memory ability was further supported by a factor analysis of data from all subjects, omitting those who described highly-practised techniques. This analysis also demonstrated the independence of initial encoding and retention processes.
The monograph raises many interesting questions concerning the existence and nature of individual differences in memory ability (a previously neglected topic), their relation to other cognitive processes and implications for theories concerning the structure of memory.

Published September 5th 1997 by Psychology Press.

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Anxiety and Cognition

A Unified Theory

• By Michael Eysenck

It is argued in this book that there are three major approaches to anxiety. First, there is anxiety as an emotional state. Second, there is trait anxiety as a dimension of personality. Third, there is anxiety as a set of anxiety disorders. What is attempted is to produce a unified theory of anxiety which integrates all these major approaches. According to this unified theory, there are four sources of information which influence the level of experienced anxiety: (1) experimental stimulation; (2) internal physiological activity; (3) internal cognitions, (e.g., worries); and (4) one's own behaviour. The unified theory is essentially based on a cognitive approach. More specifically, it is assumed that individual differences in experienced anxiety between those high and low in trait anxiety depend largely on cognitive biases. It is also assumed that the various anxiety disorders depend on cognitive biases, and that the main anxiety disorders differ in terms of the source of information most affected by such biases (e.g., social phobics have biased interpretation of their own behaviour). In sum, this book presents a general theory of anxiety from the cognitive perspective. It is intended that this theory will influence theory and research on emotion, personality, and the anxiety disorders.

Published May 14th 1997 by Psychology Press.

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Superportraits

Caricatures and Recognition

• By Gillian Rhodes

As Nixon's unpopularity increased during Watergate, his nose and jowls grew to impossible proportions in published caricatures. Yet the caricatures remained instantly recognizable. Caricatures can even be superportraits, with the paradoxical quality of being more like the face than the face itself.
How can we recognize such distorted images? Do caricatures derive their power from some special property of a face recognition system or from some more general property of recognition systems? What kind of mental representations and recognition processes make caricatures so effective? What can the power of caricatures tell us about recognition?
In seeking to answer these questions, the author assembles clues from a variety of sources: the invention and development of caricatures by artists, the exploitation of extreme signals in animal communication systems, and studies of how humans, other animals and connectionist recognition systems respond to caricatures.
Several conclusions emerge. The power of caricatures is ubiquitous. Caricatures can be superportraits for humans, other animals and computer recognition systems. They are effective for a variety of stimuli, not just faces. They are effective whether objects are mentally represented as deviations from a norm or average member of the class, or as absolute feature values on a set of dimensions. Exaggeration of crucial norm-deviation features, distinctiveness, and resemblance to caricatured memory traces are all potential sources of the power of caricature.
Superportraits will be of interest to students of cognitive psychology, perception, the visual arts and animal behavior.

Published February 28th 1997 by Psychology Press.

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Affect, Cognition and Change

Re-Modelling Depressive Thought

• By Philip J. Barnard, John D. Teasdale

This text, a collaboration between a clinical psychologist and a cognitive psychologist, offers a cognitive account of depression.

Published February 27th 1995 by Psychology Press.

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The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia

• By Christopher Donald Frith

Schizophrenic patients have bizarre experiences which reflect a disorder in the contents of consciousness. For example, patients hear voices talking about them or they are convinced that alien forces are controlling their actions. Their abnormal behaviour includes incoherence and lack of will. In this book an explanation of these baffling signs and symptoms is provided using the framework of cognitive neuropsychology.
The cognitive abnormalities that underlie these signs and symptoms suggest impairment in a system which constructs and monitors representations of certain abstract (especially mental) events in consciousness. For example, schizophrenic patients can no longer construct representations of their intentions to act. Thus, if actions occur, these will be experienced as coming out of the blue and hence can seem alien. The patient who lacks awareness of his own intentions will stop acting spontaneously and hence will show a lack of will.
The psychological processes that are abnormal in schizophrenia can be related to underlying brain systems using evidence from human and animal neuropsychology. Interactions between prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain, especially temporal cortex appear critical for constructing the contents of consciousness. It is these interactions that are likely to be impaired in schizophrenia.

Published January 31st 1995 by Psychology Press.

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Flashbulb Memories

• By Martin Conway

This book provides a state-of-the-art review and critical evaluation of research into 'flashbulb' memories. The opening chapters explore the 'encoding' view of flashbulb memory formation and critically appraise a number of lines of research that have opposed this view. It is concluded that this research does not provide convincing evidence for the rejection of the encoding view.
Subsequent chapters review and appraise more recent work which has generally found in favour of the flashbulb concept. But this research too, does not provide unequivocal support for the encoding view of flashbulb memory formation. Evidence from clinical studies of flashbulb memories, particularly in post-traumatic stress disorder and related emotional disturbances, is then considered. The clinical studies provide the most striking evidence of flashbulb memories and strongly suggest that these arise in response to intense affective experiences. Neurobiological models of memory formation are briefly reviewed and one view suggesting that there may be multiple routes to memory formation is explored in detail. From this research it seems possible that there could be a specific route for the formation of detailed and durable memories associated with emotional experiences. In the final chapter a cognitive account of flashbulb memories is outlined. This account is centred on recent plan-based theories of emotion and proposes that flashbulb memories arise in responses to disruptions of personal and cultural plans. This chapter also considers the wider functions of flashbulb memories and their potential role in the formation of generational identity.

Published December 14th 1994 by Psychology Press.

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Visuo-spatial Working Memory

• By Robert H. Logie

Representation of the visual and spatial properties of our environment is a pivotal requirement of everyday cognition. We can mentally represent the visual form of objects. We can extract information from several of the senses as to the location of objects in relation to ourselves and to other objects nearby. For some of those objects we can reach out and manipulate them. We can also imagine ourselves manipulating objects in advance of doing so, or even when it would be impossible to do so physically. The problem posed to science is how these cognitive operations are accomplished, and proffered accounts lie in two essentially parallel research endeavours, working memory and imagery. Working memory is thought to pervade everyday cognition, to provide on-line processing and temporary storage, and to update, moment to moment, our representation of the current state of our environment and our interactions with that environment.
There is now a strong case for the claims of working memory in the area of phonological and articulatory functions, all of which appear to contribute to everyday activities such as counting, arithmetic, vocabulary acquisition, and some aspects of reading and language comprehension. The claims for visual and spatial working memory functions are less convincing. Most notable has been the assumption that visual and spatial working memory are intimately involved in the generation, retention and manipulations of visual images. There has until recently been little hard evidence to justify that assumption, and the research on visual and spatial working memory has focused on a relatively restricted range of imagery tasks and phenomena.
In a more or less independent development, the literature on visual imagery has now amassed a voluminous corpus of data and theory about a wide range of imagery phenomena. Despite this, few books on imagery refer to the concept of working memory in any detail, or specify the nature of the working memory system that might be involved in mental imagery.
This essay follows a line of reconciliation and positive critiquing in exploring the possible overlap between mental imagery and working memory. Theoretical development in the book draws on data from both cognitive psychology and cognitive neuropsychology. The aim is to stimulate debate, to address directly a number of assumptions that hitherto have been implicit, and to assess the contribution of the concept of working memory to our understanding of these intriguing core aspects of human cognition.

Published November 28th 1994 by Psychology Press.

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Connectionist Modelling in Cognitive Neuropsychology

A Case Study, A Special Issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology

• By David C. Plaut, Tim Shallice

Computational models offer tools for exploring the nature of human cognitive processes. In connectionist, neural network, or parallel distributed processing models, information processing takes the form of cooperative and competitive interactions among many simple, neuron-like processing units. These models provide new ways of thinking about the neural basis of cognitive processes, and how disorders of brain function lead to disorders of cognition.
This monograph is an expanded version of a recent issue of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology. It presents the most comprehensive existing "case study" of how the effects of damage in connectionist models can replicate the detailed and diverse patterns of cognitive impairments that can arise in humans as a result of brain damage.
It begins with a review of the basic methodology of cognitive neuropsychology and of other attempts at modeling neuropsychological phenomena. It then focuses on a particular form of acquired reading disorder, "deep dyslexia," in which previously literate adults with brain damage exhibit a wide range of symptoms in pronouncing written words, the most striking of which is the production of semantic errors (e.g. reading RIVER as "ocean").
A series of simulations investigate the effects of damage in connectionist models that pronounce written words via their meaning. The work systematically explores each main aspect of the design of the models, identifying the basic computational properties that are responsible for the occurrence of deep dyslexia when the models are damaged.
Although the investigation concerns a specific form of reading impairment, the computational principles that emerge as critical are very general ones: representation of concepts as distributed patterns of activity, encoding of knowledge in terms of weights on connections between units, interactivity between units to form stable attractors for familiar activity patterns, and greater richness of concrete vs. abstract semantics. The fact that damage to models embodying these principles and damage to the brain can produce strikingly similar behaviour supports the view that the human cognitive system operates according to similar principles.

Published September 20th 1994 by Psychology Press.

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Reading and the Mental Lexicon

• By Marcus Taft

Over the last twenty years a major area of cognitive psychology has developed centred upon research into the issues of how visually presented words are processed so that they can be read and understood. The focus has been on how words are stored in the mental lexicon and retrieved during the reading process. If we possessed no mental lexicon, we would be unable to read. This book dedicates itself to a critical evaluation of the ideas that have emerged from this body of research.
The text outlines the major models of lexical processing that have been put forward in the literature, and how they explain the basic empirical findings that have been reported. It then goes on to consider the possible influence that sentential context has on lexical processing, the impact of the pronunciation of a word on its visual processing, and the role played by internal word structure (i.e., syllables and morphemes) in the recognition of a word. A connectionist style model emerges during the course of the evaluation of these issues.
This book is suitable for advanced students and researchers, and is intended to serve as a springboard for discussion and an inspiration for empirical research.

Published December 7th 1993 by Psychology Press.

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Implicit Learning

Theoretical and Empirical Issues

• By Dianne C. Berry, Zoltan Dienes

There is considerable debate over the extent to which cognitive tasks can be learned non-consciously or implicitly. In recent years a large number of studies have demonstrated a discrepancy between explicit knowledge and measured performance. This book presents an overview of these studies and attempts to clarify apparently disparate results by placing them in a coherent theoretical framework. It draws on evidence from neuropsychological and computational modelling studies as well as the many laboratory experiments.
Chapter one sets out the background to the large number of recent studies on implicit learning. It discusses research on implicit memory, perception without awareness, and automaticity. It attempts to set the implicit - explicit distinction in the context of other relevant dichotomies in the literature. Chapter two presents an overview of research on the control of complex systems, from Broadbent (1977) through to the present day. It looks at the accessibility of control task knowledge, as well as whether there is any other evidence for a distinction between implicit and explicit modes of learning. Chapter three critically reviews studies claiming to show that people can acquire concepts without being verbally aware of the basis on which they are responding. It shows that concept formation can be implicit in some sense but not in others. Chapter four investigates the claim that people can learn sequential information in an implicit way. Chapter five looks at whether computational modelling can elucidate the nature of implicit learning. It examines the feasibility of different exemplar connectionist models in accounting for performance in concept learning, sequence learning, and control task experiments. Chapter six reviews evidence concerning dissociations between implicit and explicit knowledge in various neuropsychological syndromes. Finally, chapters seven and eight discuss the many practical and theoretical implications of the research.

Published November 30th 1993 by Psychology Press.

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Working Memory and Language Processing

• By Susan E. Gathercole, Alan D. Baddeley

This book evaluates the involvement of working memory in five central aspects of language processing: vocabulary acquisition, speech production, reading development, skilled reading, and comprehension. The authors draw upon experimental, neuropsychological and developmental evidence in a wide-ranging evaluation of the contribution of two components of working memory to each aspect of language. The two components are the phonological loop, which is specialised for the processing and maintenance of verbal material, and the general-purpose processing system of the central executive.
A full introduction to the application of the working memory model to normal adults, neuropsychological patients and children is provided in the two opening chapters. Non-experts within this area will find these chapters particularly useful in providing a clear statement of the current theoretical and empirical status of the working memory model. Each of the following chapters examines the involvement of working memory in one specialised aspect of language processing, in each case integrating the available experimental, neuropsychological and developmental evidence. The book will therefore be of direct relevance to researchers interested in both language processing and memory.
Working Memory and Language is unique in that it draws together findings from normal adults, brain-damaged patients, and children. For each of these populations, working memory involvement in language processing ranging from the speech production to comprehension are evaluated. Working Memory and Language provides a comprehensive analysis of just what roles working memory does play in the processing of language.

Published September 6th 1993 by Psychology Press.

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Deduction

• By R.M.J. Byrne, P.N. Johnson-Laird

How do people make deductions? The orthodox answer to the question is that deductive reasoning depends on a mental logic containing formal rules of inference. The authors of this book have spent several years investigating the process. They repudiate the orthodox theory. They argue instead that people reason by imagining the relevant state of affairs, i.e. building an internal model of it, formulating a tentative conclusion based on this model, and then searching for alternative models that might refute the conclusion. Formal rules work syntactically; mental rules work semantically. The two theories therefore make different predictions about the difficulty of deductions. The book reports the results of experiments that compared these predictions in the three main domains of deduction: propositional reasoning based on connectives such as "if" and "or"; relational reasoning based on spatial descriptions; and complex reasoning based on quantifiers such as "all" and "none". In each domain, the results corroborated the model theory and ran counter to the use of formal rules.
The authors relate their findings to problems in artificial intelligence, linguistics and anthropology. They describe various computer programs based on the model theory, including one that solves a major problem in the design of electronic circuits. Finally, they show how the theory resolves a long standing controversy about the nature of rationality and whether there are cognitive universals common to all human cultures.

Published October 31st 1992 by Psychology Press.

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Anxiety

The Cognitive Perspective

• By Michael W. Eysenck

Theorists are increasingly arguing that it is fruitful to approach anxiety from the cognitive perspective, and the empirical evidence supports that contention. The cognitive perspective is also adopted in this book, but the approach represents a development and extension of earlier ones. For example, most previous theories and research have been based on anxiety either in clinical or in normal groups. In contrast, one of the central themes of this book is that there are great advantages to be gained from a joint consideration of clinical and normal anxiety.
Another theme of this book is that it is of major importance to establish whether or not there is a cognitive vulnerability factor which is associated with at least some forms of clinical anxiety. It is argued (with supporting evidence) that there is a latent cognitive vulnerability factor for generalized anxiety disorder which manifests itself under stressful conditions. This vulnerability factor is characterized by hypervigilance, and is found predominantly in normals high in the personality dimension of trait anxiety.
The scope of the book extends to the effects of anxiety on performance and to the phenomenon of worry, which is regarded as the cognitive component of anxiety. In both cases, a new theoretical framework is presented.

Published June 26th 1992 by Psychology Press.

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