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The Agile Mind Summary

The Agile Mind by Wilma Koutstaal (Assistant Professor of Psychology, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota)

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 behavioural 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.

The Agile Mind Reviews

Koutstaal's book is an impressive achievement, displaying a mastery of very disparate areas in the social and cognitive sciences. It is a compelling exhibit of intellectual virtuosity that has few equals in contemporary cognitive science. -- PsycCRITIQUES

About Wilma Koutstaal (Assistant Professor of Psychology, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota)

Wilma Koutstaal is a cognitive neuroscientist whose interdisciplinary research and teaching bridge thinking and memory. She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University and has taught in Canada, England, and the United States. Currently she is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Agility of Mind and the Integrated Controlled-Automatic, Specific-Abstract (iCASA) Framework ; PART I: Memory, Categorization, and Concepts ; Chapter 2 - Levels of Representational Specificity and Thinking ; Chapter 3 - Levels of Control, Representational Specificity, and Thinking Flexibly Using Memory and Categorical Knowledge ; Chapter 4 - Thinking with Our Senses ; PART II: Motivation and Emotion ; Chapter 5 - Action and Motivation: The Impetus for, and Enactment of, Agile Thinking ; Chapter 6 - Emotion, Self, Personality: Thought Personified ; Chapter 7 - Thoughts about Thoughts: The Control versus Non-control of Thinking ; Part III: Brain and Environment ; Chapter 8 - The Frontal Cortex, and Beyond:Brain Bases of Levels of Specificity and Levels of Control, Part I ; Chapter 9 - Concepts and Intuition, Resilience, Novelty and Exploration: Brain Bases of Levels of Specificity and Levels of Control, Part 2 ; Chapter 10 - Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 1: Correlational and Longitudinal Evidence ; Chapter 11 - Making Brain Paths to Agile Thinking, Part 2: Direct Experimental Evidence ; Chapter 12 - Implications and Applications of the iCASA Framework for Fostering Agile Thinking

Additional information

GOR013862519
9780199355815
0199355819
The Agile Mind by Wilma Koutstaal (Assistant Professor of Psychology, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota)
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Oxford University Press Inc
2013-11-14
784
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - The Agile Mind