Since 1991, the edited book series Studies in Perception and Action has appeared in conjunction with the biennial International Conference of Perception and Action (ICPA), a conference that provides an opportunity for individuals who share interests in ecological psychology to come together to present current research, exchange ideas, and engage in conversation on theoretical and methodological concerns. The Studies in Perception and Action series is a way to preserve the dialogues between conference attendees and researchers displaying their latest work. This volume, the eighth in the series, presents the conversations held at the 13th ICPA meeting in the summer of 2005. Studies in Perception and Action VIII includes broad coverage of the most current advances in research on perceiving and acting, including contributions from researchers in Australia, China, Japan, Europe, and North America. It addresses cutting-edge research in dynamics and human movement, recent progress in ecological approaches to perceiving and acting, and substantially extends our knowledge of just how rich a source of information the world is across a wide range of modalities. This volume will appeal to individuals who follow the research literature in ecological psychology, as well as those interested in perception, perceptual development, human movement dynamics, and social processes.

The edited book series Studies in Perception and Action contains a collection of research presented at the International Conference on Perception and Action (ICPA). The Studies series has appeared in conjunction with the biennial ICPA since 1991. ICPA provides a forum for presenting new data, theory, and methodological developments relevant to the ecological approach to perceptionaction. This volume is the 9th in the Studies in Perception and Action series, and it contains research presented at the 14th ICPA meeting in the summer of 2007. The sixty papers presented in this volume represent the latest developments in ecological psychology research from four continents. In many instances, the contributions to Studies volumes reflect the first appearance of new ideas in a scientific venue. As a result, the Studies volumes contain the most recent and cutting edge research in perception and action. This volume will appeal to individuals who follow the research literature in ecological psychology, as well as those interested in perception, perceptual development, human movement dynamics, and social processes.

Many of the things we do, we do together with other people. Think of carpooling and playing tennis. In the past two or three decades it has become increasingly popular to analyze such collective actions in terms of collective intentions. This volume brings together ten new philosophical essays that address issues such as how individuals succeed in maintaining coordination throughout the performance of a collective action, whether groups can actually believe propositions or whether they merely accept them, and what kind of evidence, if any, disciplines such as cognitive science and semantics provide in support of irreducibly collective states. The theories of the Big Four of collective intentionality -- Michael Bratman, Raimo Tuomela, John Searle, and Margaret Gilbert -- and the Big Five of Social Ontology -- which in addition to the Big Four includes Philip Pettit -- play a central role in almost all of these essays. Drawing on insights from a wide range of disciplines including dynamical systems theory, economics, and psychology, the contributors develop existing theories, criticize them, or provide alternatives to them. Several essays challenge the idea that there is a straightforward dichotomy between individual and collective level rationality, and explore the interplay between these levels in order to shed new light on the alleged discontinuities between them. These contributions make abundantly clear that it is no longer an option simply to juxtapose analyses of individual and collective level phenomena and maintain that there is a discrepancy. Some go as far as arguing that on closer inspection the alleged discontinuities dissolve

Most psychology research still assumes that mental processes are internal to the person, waiting to be expressed or activated. This compelling book illustrates that a new paradigm is forming in which contextual factors are considered central to the workings of the mind. Leading experts explore how psychological processes emerge from the transactions of individuals with their physical, social, and cultural environments. The volume showcases cutting-edge research on the contextual nature of such phenomena as gene expression, brain networks, the regulation of hormones, perception, cognition, personality, knowing, learning, and emotion.

The scientific study of the human body has burgeoned in recent years, and scholars from wide-ranging disciplines are now seeking to understand just how much information can be conveyed by the human body in motion. This volume sheds light on the potency of the human body to inform our most basic perceptions of one another.