Mental Lives: Case Studies in Cognition

Case Studies are familiar as problem–solving devices in business and in education, as well as having a traditional role in the teaching of medicine and as the psychoanalytic research. In experimental psychology, however, case studies have only recently resurfaced as a useful way of asking questions about the structure of the mind. Each of the chapters in this book describes a particular real person whom the investigator believes can tell us something important about the way the human mind develops and performs. Each chapter is written by an internationally known academic researcher in their chosen field in psychology. The cases range widely over developmental subjects, such as the girl born blind and the autistic child, to elderly patients who have had strokes or other brain damage that has oddly curtailed some previously intact cognitive skills such as drawing, writing or remembering.
The aim of this book is to bring these real life cases to life in a clear and relatively jargon–free way and so to illuminate how psychologists now use case–study evidence to approach central questions in cognition, such as the relation between brain structures and mental processes, and development of cognition. Together, the studies suggest the exciting flavour of current active research and offer new perspectives. Mental Lives is intended for use in the early stages of an undergraduate cognitive psychology course, and will also be of some use to students of developmental psychology and of neuropsychology.

Spis treści:
Contributors.
Introduction: Ruth Campbell.
1. The Girl who liked to shout in church: Simon Baron–Cohen.
2. More than meets the eye: Linda Pring.
3. Visual Thoughts: Barbara Dodd and Judith Murphy.
4. When Language is a problem: M. Gopnik.
5. Developmental verbal dyspraxia: a longitudinal case study: Joy Stockhouse.
6. Developmental reading and writing impairment: Maggie Snowling and Nata Goul andris.
7. Deaf to the meaning of words: Sue Franklin and David Howard.
8. The write stuff: a case of acquired spelling disorder: Janice Kay.
9. The two–legged apple: Jennie Powell and Jules Davidoff.
10. The smiling giraffe: an illustration of a visual memory disorder: M. Jane Riddoch and Glyn W. Humphreys.
11. Drawing without meaning?: dissociations in the graphic performance of an agnostic artist: Sue Franklin, Peter van Sommers and David Howard.
12. Developmental memory impairment: faces and patterns: Christine M. Temple.
13. Face to Face: interpreting a case of developmental prosopagnosia: Ruth Campbell.
14. Transient global amnesia: John R. Hodges.
15. Adult commissurotomy: separating the left from the right side of the brain: Dahlia W. Zaidel.
Glossary.
Author index.
Patient index.
Subject index.

Nota biograficzna:
Ruth Campbell is Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Okładka tylna:
Case Studies are familiar as problem–solving devices in business and in education, as well as having a traditional role in the teaching of medicine and as the psychoanalytic research. In experimental psychology, however, case studies have only recently resurfaced as a useful way of asking questions about the structure of the mind. Each of the chapters in this book describes a particular real person whom the investigator believes can tell us something important about the way the human mind develops and performs. Each chapter is written by an internationally known academic researcher in their chosen field in psychology. The cases range widely over developmental subjects, such as the girl born blind and the autistic child, to elderly patients who have had strokes or other brain damage that has oddly curtailed some previously intact cognitive skills such as drawing, writing or remembering.
The aim of this book is to bring these real life cases to life in a clear and relatively jargon–free way and so to illuminate how psychologists now use case–study evidence to approach central questions in cognition, such as the relation between brain structures and mental processes, and development of cognition. Together, the studies suggest the exciting flavour of current active research and offer new perspectives. Mental Lives is intended for use in the early stages of an undergraduate cognitive psychology course, and will also be of some use to students of developmental psychology and of neuropsychology.