An essential overview of theoretical issues in psychology with pedagogical features to help students identify key terms and concepts.

This thoroughly revised edition of the classic textbook explores a wide range of problems in psychology, philosophy, cognitive and brains sciences, identifying the major topics, debates, and controversies and presenting them in a balanced and accessible manner for students.

This eighth volume of the proceedings of the biennial conference of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology continues the Society's exploration of issues in the sciences of the mind. Covered topics include narrative studies, language and discourse, perspectives on cultural psychology, identity and subjectivity, critical history and post-modern debates about constructivism vs. realism. In short, the papers included in this volume present a concise summation of the state of theoretical psychology.

Outline of Theoretical Psychology discusses basic philosophical problems in the discipline and profession of psychology. The author addresses such topics as what it means to be human in psychology; how psychological knowledge is possible and what it consists of; the role of social justice in psychology; and how aesthetic experience could help us to understand the human condition. Proposing possible solutions to a range of such issues, Thomas Teo situates theoretical questions within traditional branches of philosophical inquiry: ontology, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. This book argues that in order to improve psychology as a discipline and in practice, psychologists must reconceive the unit of psychological analysis, looking beyond individual capacity and even experience. By engaging with these basic philosophical problems, Teo demonstrates how psychology can avoid its common pitfalls and continue as a force for resistance and the good.

The aim of this book is not to impart a substantive knowledge of core psychological theories, or even to analyze critically selected theories. Instead, it is to prepare the reader to analyze and advance the theoretical literature in any tradition. Theoretical psychology stands in the same relation to psychology as theoretical physics does to physics. The traditional way to study theoretical psychology is to take up one approach after another—behavioral, psychoanalytic, cognitive, and so on. The aim of this book is not to impart a substantive knowledge of core psychological theories, or even to analyze critically selected theories. Instead, it is to prepare the reader to analyze and advance the theoretical literature in any tradition. A good theoretician should be able to contribute to the study of psychoanalytic theory as readily as to behavioral theory. The skills required are the same. Instead of covering a sequence of theories, therefore, the book is organized around types of theoretical activities. It is not a work in theoretical psychology; it is a book about theoretical psychology. It also confronts psychologists' underestimation of the variety and the significance of theoretical work. Many theoretical issues do not call for empirical research—they require nothing but thinking.

Current Issues in Theoretical Psychology

The book introduces and outlines the six main approaches and considers how each has helped psychologists understand human behaviour, thought and feeling.

The recent recognition of sign languages as legitimate human languages has opened up new and unique ways for both theoretical and applied psycholinguistics and language acquisition have begun to demonstrate the universality of language acquisition, comprehension, and production processes across a wide variety of modes of communication. As a result, many language practitioners, teachers, and clinicians have begun to examine the role of sign language in the education of the deaf as well as in language intervention for atypical, language-delayed populations. This collection, edited by Patricia Siple and Susan D. Fischer, brings together theoretically important contributions from both basic research and applied settings. The studies include native sign language acquisition; acquisition and processing of sign language through a single mode under widely varying conditions; acquisition and processing of bimodal (speech and sign) input; and the use of sign language with atypical, autistic, and mentally retarded groups. All the chapters in this collection of state-of-the-art research address one or more issues related to universality of language processes, language plasticity, and the relative contributions of biology and input to language acquisition and use.

Research in cognitive psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence – the three disciplines that have the most direct application to an understanding of the mental processes in reading – is presented in this multilevel work, originally published in 1980, that attempts to provide a systematic and scientific basis for understanding and building a comprehensive theory of reading comprehension. The major focus is on understanding the processes involved in the comprehension of written text. Underlying most of the contributions is the assumption that skilled reading comprehension requires a coordination of text with context in a way that goes far beyond simply chaining together the meanings of a string of decoded words. The topics discussed are divided into five general areas: Global Issues; Text Structure; Language, Knowledge of the World, and Inference; Effects of Prior Language Experience; and Comprehension Strategies and Facilitators, and represent a broad base of methodology and data that should be of interest not only to those concerned with the reading process, but also to basic science researchers in psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and related disciplines.