Many people with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are remarkably proficient at remembering how things look and sound, even years after an event. They are also good at rote learning and establishing habits and routines. Some even have encyclopaedic memories. However, all individuals with ASD have difficulty in recalling personal memories and reliving experiences, and less able people may have additional difficulty in memorising facts. This book assembles research on memory in autism to examine why this happens and the effects it has on people's lives. The contributors utilise advances in the understanding of normal memory systems and their breakdown as frameworks for analysing the neuropsychology and neurobiology of memory in autism. The unique patterning of memory functions across the spectrum illuminates difficulties with sense of self, emotion processing, mental time travel, language and learning, providing a window into the nature and causes of autism itself.
Humans manifest an acute awareness of the passage of time and capacity for mental time travel, i.e., the ability to mentally place oneself in the past or future, as well as in counterfactual or hypothetical situations. The ability to perceive, estimate, and keep track of time involves multiple forms of representation (temporal concepts and frames of reference) and sensory modalities. Temporal cognition plays a critical role in various forms of memory (e.g., autobiographical memory, episodic memory, prospective memory), future-oriented thinking (foresight, planning), self-concepts, and autonoetic consciousness. This Research Topic addresses the myriad ways that temporal cognition impacts human behavior, how it develops, its clinical relevance, and the extent to which aspects of temporal cognition are uniquely human. Papers in this Research Topic focus on the following: 1) Low-level perceptual mechanisms that track durations, intervals, and other temporal features of stimuli. 2) Inter-relatedness of temporal reasoning and language development. 3) Temporal cognition in children with autism. 4) Cross-domain mappings between space and time across visual and auditory modalities. 5) Assessing mental time travel as a uniquely human capacity. 6) Implications of individual differences in temporal processing for health and well-being.
The problem of how humans and other intelligent systems construct causal representations from non-causal perceptual evidence has occupied scholars in cognitive science for many decades. Most contemporary approaches agree with David Hume that patterns of covariation between two events of interest are the critical input to the causal induction engine, irrespective of whether this induction is believed to be grounded in the formation of associations (Shanks & Dickinson, 1987), rule-based evaluation (White, 2004), appraisal of causal powers (Cheng, 1997), or construction of Bayesian Causal Networks (Pearl, 2000). Recent research, however, has repeatedly demonstrated that an exclusive focus on covariation while neglecting contiguity (another of Hume’s cues) results in ecologically invalid models of causal inference. Temporal spacing, order, variability, predictability, and patterning all have profound influence on the type of causal representation that is constructed. The influence of time upon causal representations could be seen as a bottom-up constraint (though current bottom-up models cannot account for the full spectrum of effects). However, causal representations in turn also constrain the perception of time: Put simply, two causally related events appear closer in subjective time than two (equidistant) unrelated events. This reversal of Hume’s conjecture, referred to as Causal Binding (Buehner & Humphreys, 2009) is a top-down constraint, and suggests that our representations of time and causality are mutually influencing one another. At present, the theoretical implications of this phenomenon are not yet fully understood. Some accounts link it exclusively to human motor planning (appealing to mechanisms of cross-modal temporal adaptation, or forward learning models of motor control). However, recent demonstrations of causal binding in the absence of human action, and analogous binding effects in the visual spatial domain, challenge such accounts in favour of Bayesian Evidence Integration. This Research Topic reviews and further explores the nature of the mutual influence between time and causality, how causal knowledge is constructed in the context of time, and how it in turn shapes and alters our perception of time. We draw together literatures from the perception and cognitive science, as well as experimental and theoretical papers. Contributions investigate the neural bases of binding and causal learning/perception, methodological advances, and functional implications of causal learning and perception in real time.
Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.
Understanding causal structure is a central task of human cognition. Causal learning underpins the development of our concepts and categories, our intuitive theories, and our capacities for planning, imagination and inference. During the last few years, there has been an interdisciplinary revolution in our understanding of learning and reasoning: Researchers in philosophy, psychology, and computation have discovered new mechanisms for learning the causal structure of the world. This new work provides a rigorous, formal basis for theory theories of concepts and cognitive development, and moreover, the causal learning mechanisms it has uncovered go dramatically beyond the traditional mechanisms of both nativist theories, such as modularity theories, and empiricist ones, such as association or connectionism.
Advances in Child Development and Behavior, Volume 56 is the latest release in this classic resource on the field of developmental psychology. Chapters highlight some of the most recent research in the field of developmental psychology, with this release covering Early moral development through social interactions, Cognitive Functioning in Children with Down Syndrome: Moderators and Opportunities for Intervention, Cultural snapshots: A Method to Capture Social Contexts in the Development of Prejudice and Stereotyping, Speaking Your Mind: Language and Narrative in Young Children's Theory of Mind Development, Interactive Digital Media and Symbolic Development, Understanding Strategy Change: Individual, Meta-cognitive and Contextual Factors, and more. - Contains chapters that highlight some of the most recent research in the area of child development and behavior - Presents a high-quality and wide range of topics covered by well-known professionals
Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development, Second Edition, provides a comprehensive entry point into the existing literature on child development in the fields of psychology, genetics, neuroscience and sociology. Featuring 171 chapters, across 3 volumes, this work helps readers understand these developmental changes, when they occur, why they occur, how they occur, and the factors that influence development. Although some medical information is included, the emphasis lies mainly in normal growth, primarily from a psychological perspective. Comprehensive and in-depth scholarly articles cover theoretical, applied and basic science topics, providing an interdisciplinary approach. All articles have been completely updated, making this resource ideal for a wide range of readers, including advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and clinicians in developmental psychology, medicine, nursing, social science and early childhood education. Cutting-edge content that cover the period of neonates to age three Organized alphabetically by topic for ease of reference Provides in-depth scholarly articles, covering theoretical, applied and basic science Includes suggested readings at the end of each article
Educational Neuroscience presents a series of readings from educators, psychologists, and neuroscientists that explore the latest findings in developmental cognitive neurosciences and their potential applications to education. Represents a new research area with direct relevance to current educational practices and policy making Features individual chapters written collaboratively by educationalist, psychologists, and neuroscientists to ensure maximum clarity and relevance to a broad range of readers Edited by a trio of leading academics with extensive experience in the field
This Handbook is a comprehensive overview of the multidisciplinary field of discourse processes. The editors hope to foster a more interdisciplinary approach to discourse processing with this Handbook, while simultaneously developing an appreciation within the field for multiple methods of establishing rigorous scientific claims. The field of discourse processes is currently fueled by seven dominant approaches: * discourse psychology; * corpus analysis; * computational discourse; * discourse technologies; * conversation analysis; * hybrid qualitative and quantitative approaches; and * cultural foundations. The contributors also discuss future trends in research, including corpus analyses, the integration of neuroscience with discourse research, and the development of more advanced computer technologies for analyzing discourse.
Developmental Science: An Advanced Textbook is the most complete and cutting-edge introduction to the field available today. Since its initial publication, the key purpose of the text has been to furnish inclusive developmental perspectives on all substantive areas in psychology—neuroscience, perception, cognition, language, emotion, and social interaction. This edition is no exception, as it continues to underscore the dynamic and exciting status of contemporary developmental science. In this Seventh Edition, Marc H. Bornstein and Michael E. Lamb once again invite international experts to prepare original, comprehensive, and topical treatments of the major areas of developmental science, which are masterfully woven into a single coherent volume. Some chapters in this edition are new, and those carried forward from the sixth edition have been extensively revised. This volume represents faithfully the current status of scholarly efforts in all aspects of developmental science. Ideal for advanced undergraduate and introductory graduate courses, the text is accompanied by a website with supplementary material for students and instructors, including chapter outlines, topics to think about before reading, glossaries, and suggested readings.
