This book represents a broad integration of several major themes in psychology toward its unification. Unifying psychology is an ongoing project that has no end-point, but the present work suggests several major axes toward that end, including causality and activation-inhibition coordination. On the development side of the model building, the author has constructed an integrated lifespan stage model of development across the Piagetian cognitive and the Eriksonian socioaffective domains. The model is based on the concept of neo-stages, which mitigates standard criticisms of developmental stage models. The new work in the second half of the book extends the primary work in the first half both in terms of causality and development. Also, the area of couple work is examined from the stage perspective. Finally, new concepts related to the main themes are represented, including on the science formula, executive function, stress dysregulation disorder, inner peace, and ethics, all toward showing the rich potential of the present modeling.

Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Without our ability to discover and empirically test causal theories, we would not have made progress in various empirical sciences. The handbook brings together the leading researchers in the field of causal reasoning and offers state-of-the-art presentations of theories and research. It provides introductions of competing theories of causal reasoning, and discusses its role in various cognitive functions and domains. The final section presents research from neighboring fields.

A concise and self-contained introduction to causal inference, increasingly important in data science and machine learning. The mathematization of causality is a relatively recent development, and has become increasingly important in data science and machine learning. This book offers a self-contained and concise introduction to causal models and how to learn them from data. After explaining the need for causal models and discussing some of the principles underlying causal inference, the book teaches readers how to use causal models: how to compute intervention distributions, how to infer causal models from observational and interventional data, and how causal ideas could be exploited for classical machine learning problems. All of these topics are discussed first in terms of two variables and then in the more general multivariate case. The bivariate case turns out to be a particularly hard problem for causal learning because there are no conditional independences as used by classical methods for solving multivariate cases. The authors consider analyzing statistical asymmetries between cause and effect to be highly instructive, and they report on their decade of intensive research into this problem. The book is accessible to readers with a background in machine learning or statistics, and can be used in graduate courses or as a reference for researchers. The text includes code snippets that can be copied and pasted, exercises, and an appendix with a summary of the most important technical concepts.

Causality offers the first comprehensive coverage of causal analysis in many sciences, including recent advances using graphical methods. Pearl presents a unified account of the probabilistic, manipulative, counterfactual and structural approaches to causation, and devises simple mathematical tools for analyzing the relationships between causal connections, statistical associations, actions and observations. The book will open the way for including causal analysis in the standard curriculum of statistics, artificial intelligence ...

The third book in Young’s unique trilogy on causality and development continues to locate and define the central role of causality in biopsychosocial and network/systems development, and as a unifying concept of psychology itself. As a way of discussing causality, in general, initially, the book focuses on the acquisition of handedness and hemispheric specialization in infancy and childhood, and their relations to the development of cognition, language, and emotion, in particular. The second part of the book elaborates an innovative 25-step Neo-Eriksonian model of development across the life course based on a Neo-Piagetian model covered in the previous books, completing a step-by-step account of development over the lifespan cognitively and socio-emotionally. It builds on the concept of neo-stage, which is network-based. From this conceptual synthesis, the author’s robust theory of development and causality identifies potential areas for psychological problems and pathology at each developmental step as well as science-based possibilities for their treatment. This elegant volume: Presents a clear picture of the development of handedness and laterality in more depth than has been attempted in the literature to date. Traces the causal concepts of activation-inhibition coordination and networking in the context of development. Describes in depth a novel 25-step Neo-Eriksonian lifespan model of development. Reviews relevant research on Piagetian and Eriksonian theories in development. Emphasizes the clinical utility of the described 25-step Neo-Eriksonian approach to lifespan development. A significant step in understanding this highly nuanced subject and synthesizing a broad knowledge base, Causality and Development will find an interested audience among developmental psychologists, mental health practitioners, academics, and researchers.chers.

This book represents a broad integration of several major themes in psychology toward its unification. Unifying psychology is an ongoing project that has no end-point, but the present work suggests several major axes toward that end, including causality and activation-inhibition coordination. On the development side of the model building, the author has constructed an integrated lifespan stage model of development across the Piagetian cognitive and the Eriksonian socioaffective domains. The model is based on the concept of neo-stages, which mitigates standard criticisms of developmental stage models. The new work in the second half of the book extends the primary work in the first half both in terms of causality and development. Also, the area of couple work is examined from the stage perspective. Finally, new concepts related to the main themes are represented, including on the science formula, executive function, stress dysregulation disorder, inner peace, and ethics, all toward showing the rich potential of the present modeling.

In this investigation of the psychological relationship between shape and time, Leyton argues compellingly that shape is used by the mind to recover the past and as such it forms a basis for memory. Michael Leyton's arguments about the nature of perception and cognition are fascinating, exciting, and sure to be controversial. In this investigation of the psychological relationship between shape and time, Leyton argues compellingly that shape is used by the mind to recover the past and as such it forms a basis for memory. He elaborates a system of rules by which the conversion to memory takes place and presents a number of detailed case studies--in perception, linguistics, art, and even political subjugation--that support these rules. Leyton observes that the mind assigns to any shape a causal history explaining how the shape was formed. We cannot help but perceive a deformed can as a dented can. Moreover, by reducing the study of shape to the study of symmetry, he shows that symmetry is crucial to our everyday cognitive processing. Symmetry is the means by which shape is converted into memory. Perception is usually regarded as the recovery of the spatial layout of the environment. Leyton, however, shows that perception is fundamentally the extraction of time from shape. In doing so, he is able to reduce the several areas of computational vision purely to symmetry principles. Examining grammar in linguistics, he argues that a sentence is psychologically represented as a piece of causal history, an archeological relic disinterred by the listener so that the sentence reveals the past. Again through a detailed analysis of art he shows that what the viewer takes to be the experience of a painting is in fact the extraction of time from the shapes of the painting. Finally he highlights crucial aspects of the mind's attempt to recover time in examples of political subjugation.

A long-awaited book from developmental disorders expert John Morton, Understanding Developmental Disorders: A Causal Modelling Approach makes sense of the many competing theories about what can go wrong with early brain development, causing a child to develop outside the normal range. Based on the idea that understanding developmental disorders requires us to talk about biological, cognitive, behavioral and environmental factors, and to talk about causal relationships among these elements. Explains what causal modelling is and how to do it. Compares different theories about particular developmental disorders using causal modelling. Will have a profound impact on research in the fields of psychology, neuroscience and medicine.

Why is understanding causation so important in philosophy and the sciences? Should causation be defined in terms of probability? Whilst causation plays a major role in theories and concepts of medicine, little attempt has been made to connect causation and probability with medicine itself. Causality, Probability, and Medicine is one of the first books to apply philosophical reasoning about causality to important topics and debates in medicine. Donald Gillies provides a thorough introduction to and assessment of competing theories of causality in philosophy, including action-related theories, causality and mechanisms, and causality and probability. Throughout the book he applies them to important discoveries and theories within medicine, such as germ theory; tuberculosis and cholera; smoking and heart disease; the first ever randomized controlled trial designed to test the treatment of tuberculosis; the growing area of philosophy of evidence-based medicine; and philosophy of epidemiology. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers in philosophy of science and philosophy of medicine, as well as those working in medicine, nursing and related health disciplines where a working knowledge of causality and probability is required.

An accessible, contemporary introduction to the methods for determining cause and effect in the Social Sciences “Causation versus correlation has been the basis of arguments—economic and otherwise—since the beginning of time. Causal Inference: The Mixtape uses legit real-world examples that I found genuinely thought-provoking. It’s rare that a book prompts readers to expand their outlook; this one did for me.”—Marvin Young (Young MC) Causal inference encompasses the tools that allow social scientists to determine what causes what. In a messy world, causal inference is what helps establish the causes and effects of the actions being studied—for example, the impact (or lack thereof) of increases in the minimum wage on employment, the effects of early childhood education on incarceration later in life, or the influence on economic growth of introducing malaria nets in developing regions. Scott Cunningham introduces students and practitioners to the methods necessary to arrive at meaningful answers to the questions of causation, using a range of modeling techniques and coding instructions for both the R and the Stata programming languages.