In the last fifty years, we've zoomed through radically different forms of communication, from typewriters to tablet computers, text messages to tweets. We generate more and more words with each passing day. Hiding in that deluge of language are amazing insights into who we are, how we think, and what we feel.In The Secret Life of Pronouns, social psychologist and language expert James W. Pennebaker uses his groundbreaking research in computational linguistics-in essence, counting the frequency of words we use-to show that our language carries secrets about our feelings, our self-concept, and our social intelligence. Our most forgettable words, such as pronouns and prepositions, can be the most revealing: their patterns are as distinctive as fingerprints.Using innovative analytic techniques, Pennebaker X-rays everything from Craigslist advertisements to the Federalist Papers-or your own writing, in quizzes you can take yourself-to yield unexpected insights. Who would have predicted that the high school student who uses too many verbs in her college admissions essay is likely to make lower grades in college? Or that a world leader's use of pronouns could reliably presage whether he led his country into war? You'll learn why it's bad when politicians use "we" instead of "I," what Lady Gaga and William Butler Yeats have in common, and how Ebenezer Scrooge's syntax hints at his self-deception and repressed emotion. Barack Obama, Sylvia Plath, and King Lear are among the figures who make cameo appearances in this sprightly, surprising tour of what our words are saying-whether we mean them to or not.

    Each difficult situation is described, how it happens is analysed, and then strategies to help you deal with the problem are suggested. Disruptive behaviour patterns can be addressed once and for all, instead of having to handle one-off 'difficult' events, time and time again. Absolutely invaluable to everybody, How People Tick is full of tried and tested tips for handling 'difficult' people in 'difficult' situations, based on a real understanding of their behaviour. It is an essential read if you find people bewildering or just plain difficult, and yet still want to understand them, work with them and live with them.

    He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

    BE BRAVE AND START SOMETHING YOU LOVE.Does this sound familiar... You tick all the right boxes; school, university, corporate career. You have a sensible profession, a fancy job title, proud parents, decent salary, pricey holidays…but there’s a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right? A realisation that you’re not completely fulfilled? Surely you should be as happy as Larry – are you being ungrateful? HELL NO. You want a different life – no spreadsheets, no commute, no late nights at the office. But if not that…then what? That is exactly what Escape The City are here to do – show you what other options are open to you.Escape The City is a community based website built around a simple concept: there is more to life than doing unfulfilling work in big corporate companies. The online platform is designed to help corporate professionals find exciting jobs, start their own businesses, and go on big adventures. The Escape Manifesto is here to support, inspire and encourage us all to make big and brave transitions in our lives.• Examines the reasons why so many people are unsatisfied with the corporate world• Explores the alternatives and the common barriers to achieving your dreams• Advice and support for making the transition to something new and developing a strategy for work and life• Contains tons of real-life examples of people who have made the leap

    Kathryn Schulz, editor of Grist magazine, argues that error is the fundamental human condition and should be celebrated as such. Guiding the reader through the history and psychology of error, from Socrates to Alan Greenspan, Being Wrong will change the way you perceive screw-ups, both of the mammoth and daily variety, forever.

    Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption—even murder and genocide—generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie.

    But some children have trouble with impulsivity and self-control. Left unaddressed, these issues can lead to some very serious problems in adolescence and adulthood. Anger control problems are the number one reason that children are referred for therapy, affecting children as young as three years old. Since anger problems in children may indicate other significant concerns, it pays to address anger in kids as soon as possible. If a child in your life has an anger problem, you need the friendly, effective activities in this book.I'm Not Bad, I'm Just Mad contains forty activities for issues such as recognizing anger triggers, better problem solving, and communication tips for defusing conflict before it gets out of hand. The workbook explores common lifestyle issues such as lack of sleep that can make anger problems worse. These fun activities will help kids talk about their feelings and learn to control them.

    Richard Gregory offers clear explanations of how we see brightness, movement, color, and objects, and he explores the phenomena of visual illusions to establish principles about how perception normally works and why it sometimes fails.Illusion continues to be a major theme in the book, which provides a comprehensive classification system. There are also sections on what babies see and how they learn to see, on motion perception, the relationship between vision and consciousness, and on the impact of new brain imaging techniques.

    Tamar Chansky frequently counsels children (and their parents) whose negative thinking creates chronic or occasional emotional hurdles and impedes optimism, flexibility, and happiness. Now, in the first book that specifically focuses on negative thinking in kids, Freeing Your Child from Negative Thinking provides parents, caregivers, and clinicians the same clear, concise, and compassionate guidance that Dr. Chansky employed in her previous guides to relieving children from anxiety and obsessive compulsive symptoms. Here she thoroughly covers the underlying causes of children's negative attitudes, as well as providing multiple strategies for managing negative thoughts, building optimism, and establishing emotional resilience.

    In addressing them, philosophers have made certain fundamental assumptions-that we can know our own minds by introspection, that most of our thinking about the world is literal, and that reason is disembodied and universal-that are now called into question by well-established results of cognitive science. It has been shown empirically that: Most thought is unconscious. We have no direct conscious access to the mechanisms of thought and language. Our ideas go by too quickly and at too deep a level for us to observe them in any simple way. Abstract concepts are mostly metaphorical. Much of the subject matter of philosophy, such as the nature of time, morality, causation, the mind, and the self, relies heavily on basic metaphors derived from bodily experience. What is literal in our reasoning about such concepts is minimal and conceptually impoverished. All the richness comes from metaphor. For instance, we have two mutually incompatible metaphors for time, both of which represent it as movement through space: in one it is a flow past us and in the other a spatial dimension we move along. Mind is embodied. Thought requires a body-not in the trivial sense that you need a physical brain to think with, but in the profound sense that the very structure of our thoughts comes from the nature of the body. Nearly all of our unconscious metaphors are based on common bodily experiences. Most of the central themes of the Western philosophical tradition are called into question by these findings. The Cartesian person, with a mind wholly separate from the body, does not exist. The Kantian person, capable of moral action according to the dictates of a universal reason, does not exist. The phenomenological person, capable of knowing his or her mind entirely through introspection alone, does not exist. The utilitarian person, the Chomskian person, the poststructuralist person, the computational person, and the person defined by analytic philosophy all do not exist. Then what does? Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosophy responsible to the science of mind offers radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. After first describing the philosophical stance that must follow from taking cognitive science seriously, they re-examine the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self: then they rethink a host of philosophical traditions, from the classical Greeks through Kantian morality through modern analytic philosophy. They reveal the metaphorical structure underlying each mode of thought and show how the metaphysics of each theory flows from its metaphors. Finally, they take on two major issues of twentieth-century philosophy: how we conceive rationality, and how we conceive language.

    Psychology of Learning for Instruction, Third Edition, focuses on the applications and implications of the learning theories. Using excellent examples ranging from primary school instruction to corporate training, this text combines the latest thinking and research to give readers the opportunity to explore the individual theories as viewed by the experts. Readers are encouraged to apply "reflective practice," which is designed to foster a critical and reflective mode of thinking when considering any particular approach to learning and instruction. Provides readers with the practical knowledge needed to apply learning theories to instruction. KEY TOPICS: This text addresses learning as it relates to behavior, cognition, development, biology, motivation and instruction. MARKET: Pre-service and in-service teachers, and educational psychologists.

    You're not stuck with the brain you're born with. Here are just a few of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen's surprising--and effective--"brain prescriptions" that can help heal your brain and change your life:To Quell Anxiety and Panic: ¸  Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoilTo Fight Depression: ¸  Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts)To Curb Anger: ¸  Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rageTo Conquer Impulsiveness and Learn to Focus: ¸  Develop total focus with the "One-Page Miracle"To Stop Obsessive Worrying: ¸  Follow the "get unstuck" writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises

    The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension skills at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware.But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

    Filled with fun anecdotes, quirky photos, and off-the-wall business advice, the provocative sequel to "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How good You Want to Be" reveals the surprising power of bad decisions.

    Lucinda Bassett's effective program, which teaches people how to think differently and respond in a less anxious way, is enabling hundreds of thousands all over the world to transform their draining doubts, fears, and anxieties into positive energy and newfound freedom. Her methods allow sufferers to gain a new understanding of themselves and their challenges when dealing with anxiety and teach effective skills to help transform negative self–talk and destructive worry habits into recently discovered compassion and confidence.