Search Results

As adults, we can quickly interpret minimal visual information as a cue that something is animate, as when we briefly catch sight of a mouse darting from hiding place to hiding place. With a mere glance, we can often infer that someone has agency, is moving towards a goal, or is feeling a particular emotion. Recently, there has been renewed interest in the attribution of agency and the understanding of goal-directed behavior, following a rapid increase in empirical discoveries leading to the conclusion that an intuitive understanding of social others is an early-developing part of our human nature, and may be compromised in certain clinical populations, namely autism. This book presents current research in the interdisciplinary field of social perception, including the perception of biological motion, the perception of animacy, attributions of intentionality, and the development of these psychological processes. Authors include researchers who mainly see themselves as vision scientists, those who are developmental psychologists, those who are known for their research in autism, and those who take neuroscientific approaches. The theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms presented cut across four areas: Developmental Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Neuroscience, and Clinical Approaches.

Why do some individuals commit violent offenses while others restrict themselves to nonviolent crime? Most people probably assume that criminologists know a great deal about the causes of violent offending. It might surprise them to know that there is little consensus about what distinguishes violent offenders from those who commit less serious crime. Further, most criminological theory and research applies mainly to lesser criminal offenses and most of the work published in developmental psychology applies best to general conduct problems, not necessarily physical aggression. The purpose of this book is to narrowly delineate the causes of violence and physical aggression as they contrast with the causes of other forms of antisocial behavior. In each substantive chapter, we select one potential cause of violence (attachment insecurity, parental rejection, low intelligence, school problems, child abuse, poverty, community disorder, and substance use) and assess the state of published evidence related to its ability to differentially predict violent behavior. To that end, we conducted extensive literature searches to unearth all existing relevant empirical work, published in English, for each topic. While the book is first and foremost a scholarly contribution to the fields of developmental psychology and criminology, the early chapters introducing the problem, discussing the development of violent behavior, and reviewing the sociological views of violence and motivation, will make it suitable for use as a text for an advanced course on violence or as a secondary text in an introductory criminology course.