Conversations About Psychology

Conversations About Psychology, Volume 1, includes the following 5 carefully-edited Ideas Roadshow Conversations featuring leading researchers. This collection includes a detailed preface highlighting the connections between the different books. Each book is broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:

 1. Believing Your Ears: Examining Auditory Illusions - A Conversation with Diana Deutsch, Professor of Psychology at UC San Diego and one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of music. This conversation provides behind the scenes insights into her discovery of a large number of auditory illusions, including the so-called Octave Illusion, which concretely illustrate how what we think we’re hearing is often quite different from the actual sounds that are hitting our eardrums.

2. In Search of a Mechanism: From the Brain to the Mind - A Conversation with Chris Frith, Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at University College London and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London. After an interesting exploration of how Chris Frith became interested in the study of schizophrenia, this detailed conversation examines topics such how our understanding of schizophrenia has evolved, the role of dopamine, how the brain works, the brain’s predicting role, the phantom limb phenomenon, how the brain and mind link up, how culture affects the brain and much more.

3. Understanding ADHD - A Conversation with Stephen Hinshaw, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley. Stephen Hinshaw is an expert in the fields of clinical child and adolescent psychology and developmental psychopathology, as well as stigma, preventive interventions and dehumanization related to mental illness. This extensive conversation examines the facts and misunderstandings surrounding ADHD, diagnosis and misdiagnosis, treatment, family responsibilities, the subtitles of medication, adult ADHD, gender, what’s happening on an international level and finally the stigma of mental illness.

4. Applied Psychology: Thinking Critically - A Conversation with Stephen Kosslyn, a renowned psychologist and Founder, President and Chief Academic Officer of Foundry College.This wide-ranging conversation explores Kosslyn and his colleagues’ extensive analysis of research results on the differences between what the top parts of the brain and the bottom parts of the brain do and what the implications of those results are for everyday life which led to a new theory of personality called the Theory of Cognitive Modes. In addition the discussion covers how pedagogical principles were applied in the real world of learning and teaching by establishing Minerva Schools at KGI.

5. Mind-Wandering & Meta-Awareness - A Conversation with Jonathan Schooler, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This wide-ranging conversation examines how mind-wandering can serve as a window into the psychological world of meta-awareness. further topics include the nature of consciousness, mindfulness, creativity, free will, verbal overshadowing and more.

Howard Burton is the founder and host of all Ideas Roadshow Conversations and was the Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and an MA in philosophy.