Six Theories Of Mind

A collection of empirical reports and conceptual analyses written by leading researchers in an exciting new area of the cognitive sciences. The book examines a fundamental change that occurs in children's cognition between the ages of two and six.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

In attempting to understand and explain various behaviour, events, and phenomena in their field, psychologists have developed and enunciated an enormous number of ‘best guesses’ or theories concerning the phenomenon in question. Such theories involve speculations and statements that range on a potency continuum from ‘strong’ to ‘weak’. The term theory, itself, has been conceived of in various ways in the psychological literature. In the present dictionary, the strategy of lumping together all the various traditional descriptive labels regarding psychologists ‘best guesses’ under the single descriptive term theory has been adopted. The descriptive labels of principle, law, theory, model, paradigm, effect, hypothesis and doctrine are attached to many of the entries, and all such descriptive labels are subsumed under the umbrella term theory. The title of this dictionary emphasizes the term theory (implying both strong and weak best guesses) and is a way of indication, overall, the contents of this comprehensive dictionary in a parsimonious and felicitous fashion. The dictionary will contain approximately 2,000 terms covering the origination, development, and evolution of various psychological concepts, as well as the historical definition, analysis, and criticisms of psychological concepts. Terms and definitions are in English. *Contains over 2,000 terms covering the origination, development and evolution of various psychological concepts *Covers a wide span of theories, from auditory, cognitive tactile and visual to humor and imagery *An essential resource for psychologists needing a single-source quick reference

Do children have a theory of mind? If they do, at what age is it acquired? What is the content of the theory, and how does it differ from that of adults? "The Child's Theory of Mind "integrates the diverse strands of this rapidly expanding field of study. It charts children's knowledge about a fundamental topic - the mind and characterizes that developing knowledge as a coherent commonsense theory, strongly advancing the understanding of everyday theories as well as the commonsense theory of mind.Henry M. Wellman is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.