Experimental Slips and Human Error: Exploring the Architecture of Volition / Edition 1

by Bernard J. Baars

Overview

Whereas most humans spend their time trying to get things right, psycholo­ gists are perversely dedicated to error. Errors are extensively used to in­ vestigate perception, memory, and performance; some clinicians study errors like tea leaves for clues to unconscious motives; and this volume presents the work of researchers who, in an excess of perversity, actually cause people to make predictable errors in speech and action. Some reasons for this oddity are clear. Errors seem to stand at the nexus of many deep-psychological questions. The very concept of error presupposes a goal or criterion by comparison to which an error is an error; and goals bring in the foundation issues of control, motivation, and volition (Baars, 1987, 1988; Wiener, 1961). Errors serve to measure the quality of performance in learning, in expert knowledge, and in brain damage and other dysfunctional states; and by surprising us, they often call attention to phenomena we might otherwise take for granted. Errors also seem to reveal the "natural joints" in perception, language, memory, and problem solving-revealing units that may otherwise be invisible (e. g. , MacKay, 1981; Miller, 1956; Newell & Simon, 1972; Treisman & Gelade, 1980).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306438660
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	11/30/1992
Series:	Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics
Edition description:	1992
Pages:	346
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.04(d)

Table of Contents

I: Introduction.- 1: The Many Uses of Error: Twelve Steps to a Unified Framework.- II: Theoretical Approaches.- 2: Errors, Ambiguity, and Awareness in Language Perception and Production.- 3: Cognitive Underspecification: Its Variety and Consequences.- 4: A New Ideomotor Theory of Voluntary Control.- 5: Opportunistic Planning and Freudian Slips.- III: Methods for Inducing Predictable Slips in Speech and Action.- 6: A Dozen Competing-Plans Techniques for Inducing Predictable Slips in Speech and Action.- 7: Laboratory Induction of Nonspeech Action Errors.- 8: The Reliability and Replicability of Naturalistic Speech Error Data: A Comparison with Experimentally Induced Errors.- 9: General and Specific Factors in “Transformational Errors”: An Experimental Study.- IV: Findings and Theory Derived from Induced Slips.- 10: Errors in Inner Speech.- 11: Error-Minimizing Mechanisms: Boosting or Editing?.- 12: Some Caveats on Testing the Freudian Slip Hypothesis: Problems in Systematic Replication.- V: Commentary.- 13: The Psychology of Slips.

Editorial Reviews

Relates the methodology and results of a 15-year-long research program on the laboratory induction of slips (including a variety of linguistic and performative errors); compiles papers on aspects of current theory on the control of speech and action; and explores the implications of slips in understanding the nature of voluntary control. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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