First Published in 1986. This book marks a watershed in cognitive science activity at Yale University. Over the past decade, the cognitive science orientation has become more and more integrated into the mainstream of cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence workers now feel comfortable thinking about psychological experimentation. This book collects in one place the research work which concentrates on covering topics in the representation, processing, and recall of meaningful verbal .materials. Several of the chapters are first reports of research; others are specially prepared reviews and elaborations of research reported previously. Here it is all together: Studies of scripts, plans, and higher-level knowledge structures; analyses of knowledge structure activation, of autobiographical memory, of the phenomenon of reminding, of the summarization of text, of explanations for events, and more.

Taking a broad, yet specialized approach that is a first in the field, this book examines three threads: traditional structures for organizing knowledge; personal structures for organizing knowledge; and socially-constructed structures for organizing knowledge.

Thirty-three of the top scholars in this fast moving domain present a picture of work at the cusp in social psychology -- work that deals with cognition and affect in close relationships. The present volume contains a wealth of research findings and influential theoretical accounts that spring as much from indigenous work in the close relationship field as from purebred social cognition. The chapters introduce theories and research programs concerned with the role of individual and couple differences in close relationship knowledge structures. They deal with the role of emotion and affect in close relationships. And they discuss the function of cognition and knowledge structures in relation to the developmental course of close relationships. Each section is accompanied by a critical review written by an expert in the field. This volume is a must for any close relationship scholar interested in the latest research and theorizing about close relationships that adopt a social psychological perspective. It will also be of interest to scholars and students working in clinical psychology, social cognition, communication, individual differences, and family studies.

This book aims to synthesize different directions in knowledge studies into a unified theory of knowledge and knowledge processes. It explicates important relations between knowledge and information. It provides the readers with understanding of the essence and structure of knowledge, explicating operations and process that are based on knowledge and vital for society. The book also highlights how the theory of knowledge paves the way for more advanced design and utilization of computers and networks.

The Structures of Practical Knowledge investigates the nature of practical knowledge – why, how, when and by whom it is codified, and once codified, how this knowledge is structured. The inquiry unfolds in a series of fifteen case studies, which range in focus from early modern Italy to eighteenth century China. At the heart of each study is a shared definition of practical knowledge, that is, knowledge needed to obtain a certain outcome, whether that be an artistic or mechanical artifact, a healing practice, or a mathematical result. While the content of practical knowledge is widely variable, this study shows that all practical knowledge is formally equivalent in following a defined workflow, as reflected in a construction procedure, a recipe, or an algorithm. As explored in the volume’s fifteen contributions, there are three levels at which structures of practical knowledge may be understood and examined. At the most immediate level, there are the individual workflows that encompasses practical knowledge itself. Probing further, it is possible to examine the structure of practical knowledge as it is externalized and codified in texts, drawings, and artifacts such as models. Finally, practical knowledge is also related to social structures, which fundamentally determine its dissemination and evolution into new knowledge structures. The social structures of professionals and institutions represent the critical means by which practical knowledge takes form. These actors are the agents of codification, and by means of selection, appropriation, investment, and knowledge development, they determine the formation of new structures of practical knowledge. On a more abstract level, the creation of new knowledge structures is understood as constituting the basis for the further development of scientific knowledge. Rich in subject matter and incisive in the theory it lays out, this volume represents an important contribution to the history of science and epistemology. Individually, the fifteen case studies – encompassing the history of architecture, mining, brewing, glass production, printing, ballistics, mechanics, cartography, cosmology and astronomy – are replete with original research, and offer new insights into the history of science. Taken together, the contributions remodel historical epistemology as a whole, elucidating the underlining knowledge structures that transcend disciplinary boundaries, and that unite practitioners across time and space.

This book is a sign of its times. Each one of the chapters - papers written by European authors of various backgrounds- illustrates a departure from the style of theorizing that has been prominent in the behavioral and social sciences for most of the century. Until very recently, models for behavioral phenomena were chi~fly based on numerical representations of the objects of concern, e. g. the subjects and the stimuli under study. This was due in large part to the influence of nineteenth century physics, which played the role of the successful older sister, the one that had to be imitated if one wished to be taken seriously in scientific circles. The mystical belief that there could be science only when the objects of concern were susceptible of measurement in the sense of physics was a credo that could not be violated without risks. Another, more honor able justification was that the numerical models were the only ones capable of feasible calculations. (In fact, these models were typically linear. ) An early example of such theorizing in psychology is factor analysis, which attempted to represent the results of mental tests in a real vector space of small dimen sionality, each subject being represented by a point in that space. A dimension Wa£ interpreted as a scale measuring some mental ability. The analysis was simple, and only required an electrical desk calculator (with spinning wheels), and a suitable amount of determination.