Synopses & Reviews
What would happen if someone brought together the finest minds in psychology to reflect on the past century and speculate on the future of the field in the twenty-first century? Robert Solso and Dominic Massaro did just that, and the result is this fascinating, insightful, and sometimes humorous collection of essays from leading psychologists, among them Gordon Bower, Howard Gardner, Richard Gregory, Earl Hunt, Stephen Kosslyn, Jean Mandler, Donald Norman, Roger Shepard, Roger Sperry, and Robert Sternberg. American psychology recently reached its centennial, and these contributions offer a glimpse of what sorts of developments and innovations we can expect over the next century. For anyone with a professional or personal interest in psychology, this wide-ranging work will provoke thought and discussion about the shape of psychology as we approach the next century.
Review
"The essays offer amusing summaries of major breakthrough areas of psychology and neurobiology ... This volume is especially interesting for how psychologists feel about the future of what we can know now, a future very much operationally defined by the tools we invent. Recommended for academic psychologists or as an introduction to major trends in research psychology." -- The Reader's Review
Synopsis
What is the future of psychology? Will it continue to splinter into increasingly disparate camps or find new common ground? This book brings together leading experts--including Roger Sperry, Stephen Kosslyn, and Gordon Bower--to answer such questions.
About the Author
Robert L. Solso is Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno. His many published works include Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and Cognition and the Visual Arts.
Dominic Massaro is Professor of Psychology at University of California, Santa Cruz, and Book Editor for the American Journal of Psychology.
Table of Contents
PART I: Introductory Comments and General Theories 1. Turning the Corner, R.L. Solso
2. Empowering People Through Friendly Technology: Psychology in the Twenty-first Century, G.H. Bower
3. The Impact and Promise of the Cognitive Revolution, R.W. Sperry
4. Mental Universals: Toward a Twenty-first Century Science of Mind, R.N. Shepard
PART II: Developmental Theories and Neurocognition
5. Perennial Antinomies and Perpetual Redrawings: Is There Progress in the Study of Mind?, H. Gardner
6. The Death of Developmental Psychology, J.M. Mandler
7. Freud Returns?, S.M. Kosslyn
PART III: Memory, Perception, and Ecology
8. Human Memory in the Twenty-first Century, B.B. Murdock
9. The Miller's Tale: A Speculative Glimpse into the Cognitive Psychology of the Future, R.J. Sternberg
10. The Future of Psychology, R.L. Gregory
11. Toward an Ecological Physics and a Physical Psychology, M.T. Turvey and R.E. Shaw
PART IV: Language and Categorization
12. Unintended Consequences and the Future of Psychology, J.J. Jenkins
13. Chapters of Psychology, W.J.M. Levelt
14. From Speech-is-Special to Talking Heads: The Past to the Present, D.W. Massaro
15. The Neurocognitive Self: Conceptual Research in the Twenty-first Century and the Rethinking of What a Person Is, G. Lakoff
PART V: Applied and Social Cognition
16. The Future of the Mind Lies in Technology, D.A. Norman
17. Pulls and Pushes on Cognitive Psychology: The View Towards 2001, E. Hunt
18. The Fortieth Anniversary of the National Institute of Cognitive Ecology, R. Sommer
19. Some Assembly Required: Biased Speculations on the Future of Human Factors Design, J.B. Pittinger
PART VI: Major Themes and Common Threads
20. Perennial Issues for the Next Century, D.W. Massaro and R.L. Solso