Main description:

Increasingly, contemporary quantitative cognitive science is appearing in mainstream clinical-science and clinical-practice journals, and many of the techniques under study hold promise for aiding individuals who have problems in living. The essays in this volume showcase fertile clinical applications of quantitative cognitive science in charting abnormalities among groups and individuals, and discuss ways in which readers can apply these techniques in their own research and potentially in clinical assessment and practice. The contributors are cognitive scientists who have formally modeled clinically relevant aspects of cognitive functioning or cognition-related symptoms among special populations, and clinical scientists who have adapted techniques of quantitative cognitive science to advance their clinical research and assessment. The essays in this anthology feature findings from studies of specific clinical samples and a variety of disorders, but also present quantitative techniques and associated data-acquisition methods that have general application. As the editor and the chapter authors show, much of the clinically significant information lodged in clinical and experimental paradigms would be untapped but for the application of the kinds of formal task performance models detailed in this book. Many of the paradigms and models described are ideally suited for computer-assisted equipment, and can be extended to explorations of the neurocircuitry of assessed functions through contemporary fMRI and electrophysiological technology. This cutting-edge collection includes material not yet available in any other work.