For years, thinkers have debated the meaning and origin of the self-concept. Among contested issues are how people in different cultures can have sharply different concepts of self, what can be known
Symbol Use and Symbolic Representation: Developmental and Comparative Perspectives is the proceedings of a workshop held at Emory University in 2002 to discuss the difficult and age-old issue of what
Categories straddle the boundary between the mind and the world: they are socially developed mental representations, but they must fit the properties of real objects in the real environment if they are to be useful. Concepts and Conceptual Development reflects the view that a full understanding of categorization must take all these constraints into account. Everyday terms and categories depend not only on the implicit theories that people have about the world (their 'idealised cognitive models'), but also on the objective properties of particular objects and the perceptible similarities among these objects. An understanding of these multiple relationships can reshape studies of concepts and conceptual development. Concepts and Conceptual Development draws together theorists from a wide range of theoretical orientations to consider many different aspects of 'the psychology of concepts'.
Recollections of unexpected and emotional events (called 'flashbulb' memories) have long been the subject of theoretical speculation. Previous meetings have brought together everyone who has done research on memories of the Challenger explosion, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of flashbulb memories. How do flashbulb memories compare with other kinds of recollections? Are they unusually accurate, or especially long-lived? Do they reflect the activity of a special mechanism, as has been suggested? Although Affect and Accuracy in Recall focuses on flashbulb memories, it addresses more general issues of affect and accuracy. Do emotion and arousal strengthen memory? If so, under what conditions? By what physiological mechanisms? This 1993 volume is evidence of progress made in memory research since Brown and Kulick's 1977 paper.
In Remembering Reconsidered, the new ecologically oriented study of memory makes contact with more traditional approaches. The emerging result may be what several of the authors have begun to call 'functionalism': a concern with the adaptive significance of memory in ordinary life coupled with a careful analysis of the variables on which it depends. In different ways, the chapters reflect this concern. The editors bring together a diverse collection of studies on remembering, using subjects ranging from folk songs to 'crib talk'. Introductory chapters weave these themes together, developing an underlying sense of the project of the volume as a whole. This is the second volume in the Emory Symposia on Cognition. The Emory Cognition Project, directed by Ulric Neisser, emphasizes an ecological approach to problems in theoretical, experimental, and applied cognitive psychology.
What is the self-concept and how does it develop? Do people in different cultures have sharply different concepts of self? Can we believe what our informants tell us on this point? What is known about the self-concepts of depressives? of schizophrenics? How does meditation affect the sense of self? Is there an inner 'self of selves' as James once suggested? These are, of course, hotly debated questions in the social sciences. In this book a prestigious group of psychologists, linguists, anthropologists and philosophers addresses these questions and presents some surprising answers. This is the third and last of the Emory Symposia organized around Ulric Neisser's cognitive theory of self-knowledge, it goes beyond The Perceived Self and The Remembering Self to deal with psychological and philosophical questions surrounding the self.
This book brings different ideas to bear on the classical problem of the self. Self-perception, both ecological and social, is the earliest and most fundamental form of self-knowledge. In his introduction, Ulric Neisser describes the 'ecological self' as based on direct and realistic perception of one's situation in the environment; the 'interpersonal self' as established by social interaction with other people. He argues that both of these 'selves' appear in early infancy, long before anything like a self-concept or a self-narrative is possible. In subsequent chapters, fifteen contributors - psychologists, philosophers and others - elaborate on these notions and introduce related ideas of their own. Their topics range from the perceptual and social development of infants to autism and blindness; from mechanisms of motor control to dance and non-verbal communication. The combined contributions of these leading individuals creates an unusual synthesis of perceptual, social and
Recollections of unexpected and emotional events (called 'flashbulb' memories) have long been the subject of theoretical speculation. Previous meetings have brought together everyone who has done research on memories of the Challenger explosion, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of flashbulb memories. How do flashbulb memories compare with other kinds of recollections? Are they unusually accurate, or especially long-lived? Do they reflect the activity of a special mechanism, as has been suggested? Although Affect and Accuracy in Recall focuses on flashbulb memories, it addresses more general issues of affect and accuracy. Do emotion and arousal strengthen memory? If so, under what conditions? By what physiological mechanisms? This 1993 volume is evidence of progress made in memory research since Brown and Kulick's 1977 paper.
