Author: W. Lambert Gardiner

Publisher: W. Lambert Gardiner

Published: 2008-12

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1425184669

This book is designed to capture the complexity of the vast domain of the psychology of communication by adding overlays of different logical approaches to the topic. Each chapter will focus on a different approach. Chapters 2 (behavioristic approach), 3 (humanistic approach), and 4 (interactionist approach) are presented as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. They focus respectively on input, stored, and fedback information. Chapters 5 (phylogenetic approach) and 6 (ontogenetic approach) place psychology firmly where it belongs as the study of organisms rather than of mechanisms. Development from animal to human and from child to adult is emancipation from tyranny of environment. Chapter 7 (pathological approach) explores functional disorders of person-in-environment, since the nervous system "knows" its environment. Chapter 8 (phenomenological approach) deals with the further complexity that the nervous system can be viewed from the inside (experience) as well as from the outside (behavior). Chapters 9 (simulation approach) and 10 (mediational approach) focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligence amplification (IA). Computers can be used to emulate or to extend human intelligence. Chapters 11 (biological approach) and 12 (sociological approach) deal with the complexities arising from the fact that the nervous system is embedded in a hierarchy of systems within systems. They focus on emergence from the level below psychology (biology) and reduction from the level above (sociology). Each approach will cast some light on the topic from its peculiar perspective. The cumulative effect will be to illuminate the domain in all its complexity.