First published in English 1968, in this volume Paul Fraisse begins with history, looking at the evolution of experimental psychology, starting with its origins. He then moves on to the establishment of experimental psychology around the world. In the second chapter he discusses the experimental method. In the third chapter Jean Piaget tackles the questions of explanation and parallelism and their problems within experimental psychology. The final chapter by Maurice Reuchlin goes on to discuss measurement in psychology looking at various scales with their experimental conditions and numerical properties.

First published in English in 1970, the first chapter of the book is concerned with conditioned reactions. Jean François le Ny discusses ways in which conditioned reactions are acquired and the laws governing their function. The second contributor, Gérard de Montpellier, looks at different types of learning. The varying processes involved in both animal and human learning are considered, together with some general factors and mechanisms of learning. The third section of the book by Geneviève Oléron deals with the phenomenon of transfer. Among the topics included are the determination of transfer effects, transfer in perceptual-motor activities and explanations of transfer. In the final chapter, César Florès examines memory, forgetting and reminiscence. The discussion covers methodology, the influence of material, the role of practice, the part played by attitudes, motivation and emotive reactions in the memory process, as well as the importance of organisation of memory tasks on the part of the subject.

First published in English in 1969, the book opens with a chapter by Pierre Oléron on intellectual activities. These fall into three groups: inductive activities (the apprehension of laws, relations and concepts), reasoning and problem solving. It describes typical methods and essential results obtained by relevant experiments. There are two chapters by Jean Piaget and his collaborator Bärbel Inhelder. The first, on mental images, breaks new ground: it describes original experiments carried out by Piaget and associates with children of various ages. Piaget examines the relations between images and motor activity, imitation, drawing and operations. He also classifies images according to their degree of complexity and show why children have inadequate images of some processes. The second chapter is on intellectual operations and Piaget gives a summary of the main findings of a number of his earlier books, on the child’s notions of conservation, classification, seriation, number, measurement, time, speed and chance. In the last chapter, Pierre Gréco discusses learning and intellectual structures. He describes the work of psychologists with rats in mazes and formulating theories of animal learning. Gestalt psychology and various other interpretations are examined and Greco also pays attention to Piaget’s view of ‘structural learning’ based on experience.

First published in English in 1968, Joseph Nuttin contributes the first chapter, on Motivation. He discusses various aspects of the motivational process. Such as incentives, conflict, social motivation, and negative motivation, and describes the mechanism of the process. The second chapter, by Paul Fraisse, is on the Emotions. Fraisse examines the nature of the emotions, both on the behavioural and on the neurophysiological levels, and goes on to define and discuss moving situations. He shows the different types of expression an emotional reaction may take, and discusses the causes of hyper-emotionality. Richard Meili writes on the Structure of the Personality, showing the importance of the idea of trait in the psychology of personality. He describes the use of the factorial method in the analysis of personality, and gives an account of the beginnings of personality, as well as the different parts, known as instances, of the total organization of personality.

First published in English in 1969, the book opens with a chapter by Pierre Oléron on intellectual activities. These fall into three groups: inductive activities (the apprehension of laws, relations and concepts), reasoning and problem solving. It describes typical methods and essential results obtained by relevant experiments. There are two chapters by Jean Piaget and his collaborator Bärbel Inhelder. The first, on mental images, breaks new ground: it describes original experiments carried out by Piaget and associates with children of various ages. Piaget examines the relations between images and motor activity, imitation, drawing and operations. He also classifies images according to their degree of complexity and show why children have inadequate images of some processes. The second chapter is on intellectual operations and Piaget gives a summary of the main findings of a number of his earlier books, on the child’s notions of conservation, classification, seriation, number, measurement, time, speed and chance. In the last chapter, Pierre Gréco discusses learning and intellectual structures. He describes the work of psychologists with rats in mazes and formulating theories of animal learning. Gestalt psychology and various other interpretations are examined and Greco also pays attention to Piaget’s view of ‘structural learning’ based on experience.

This book offers an analysis of experimental psychology that is embedded in a general understanding of human behavior. It provides methodological self-awareness for researchers who study and use the experimental method in psychology. The book critically reviews key research areas (e.g., rule-breaking, sense of agency, free choice, task switching, task sharing, and mind wandering), examining their scope, limits, ambiguities, and implicit theoretical commitments. Topics featured in this text include: Methods of critique in experimental research Goal hierarchies and organization of a task Rule-following and rule-breaking behavior Sense of agency Free-choice tasks Mind wandering Experimental Psychology and Human Agency will be of interest to researchers and undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, theoretical psychology, and critical psychology, as well as various philosophical disciplines.