The Agile Mind

by Koutstaal, Wilma

• ISBN13: 9780195367188
• ISBN10: 0195367189
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This text proposes a new integrative framework for understanding and promoting creatively adaptive thinking. The mind is not only cognition, narrowly construed, but is deeply intermeshed with action, perception, and emotion. This means that optimal mental agility is realized at the dynamic intersection of environment, brain, and mind. Building on empirical research from the behavioral and brain sciences, from developmental and social psychology, and from neuropsychology, psychopathology, and allied disciplines, this book argues that understanding our agile minds requires that we go beyond dichotomous classifications of cognition as intuitive versus deliberate. When we are optimally creatively adaptive, we are able to adroitly move across not only a wide range of levels of cognitive control, but also across multiple levels of detail. Neither abstraction nor specificity, neither controlled nor automatic processes alone are what is needed. Contextually sensitive variation is essential, including rapidly intermixed modes of cognitive control, if we are to realize our fullest capacities for insightful innovation, fluent improvisation, and flexible thinking. Written for an interdisciplinary audience, empirical findings are enriched with insights from the arts and literature. Mastering the many factors that can help to promote mental agility is important to each of us, both individually and collectively, as shapers and makers of our selves and our societies.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xvii
Acknowledgments	p. xix
Agility of Mind and the Integrated Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract (iCASA) Framework	p. 3
Memory, Categorization, and Concepts
Flexibly Using Memory and Categorical Knowledge, Part 1: Levels of Representational Specificity and Thinking	p. 53
Flexibly Using Memory and Categorical Knowledge, Part 2: Levels of Control, Representational Specificity, and Thinking	p. 90
Thinking with Our Senses	p. 125
Motivation and Emotion
Action and Motivation: The Impetus for, and Enactment of, Agile Thinking	p. 179
Emotion, Self, Personality: Thought Personified	p. 238
Thoughts about Thoughts: The Control versus Noncontrol of Thinking	p. 282
Brain and Environment
Brain Bases of Levels of Specificity and Levels of Control, Part 1: The Frontal Cortex, and Beyond	p. 337
Brain Bases of Levels of Specificity and Levels of Control, Part 2: Concepts and Intuition, Resilience, Novelty, and Exploration	p. 387
Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 1: Correlational and Longitudinal Evidence	p. 462
Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 2: Direct Experimental Evidence	p. 526
Implications and Applications of the iCASA Framework for Fostering Agile Thinking	p. 573
Notes	p. 613
References	p. 639
Index	p. 739
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