Comprehensive data backs up a much-tested system that assists parents in getting their children to a calmer state of mind.
Helping your child destress.
At some point in every child's life, he or she manifests symptoms of what parents often mistakenly identify as misbehavior: the temper tantrum in the store, the refusal to go to bed at the appointed hour, the inability to sit still and concentrate in school. Shanker (Psychology and Philosophy/York Univ.) helps parents realize that many times this "misbehavior" is simply a reaction to excessive stress. Demonstrating how to "[reframe] the perception of a child's behavior,” the author shows that “once you can distinguish between misbehavior and stress behavior, you find yourself better able to pause and reflect when he does something you find disturbing, rather than reacting automatically." By identifying the causes of stress or overstimulation—too much noise, light, cold, or heat, etc.—parents can then work toward reducing these issues. “Self-reg” is a five-step process: one must study the signs of distress, identify the stressors, reduce them, become aware of when these moments occur, and finally figure out what is calming and restful so the child can recover. Often, writes Shanker, it is as simple as turning off the lights and TV and gently rubbing the child's back in a safe spot such as his or her bed. The author bolsters his theories with case studies of real patients whose numerous behavioral issues have been resolved using his five-step method. He also provides plenty of scientific analysis of the way the human brain works and how humans respond to different stimuli. His information is straightforward and will be useful for any age level, from infant to adolescent to adult. When carried out as methodically as Shanker describes, his process should help many parents with children who are simply reacting to our overstimulated world.
Comprehensive data backs up a much-tested system that assists parents in getting their children to a calmer state of mind.Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59420-609-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Though full of pauses, second glances, and head-scratches, this is a very welcome primer in logical thinking.
Logic helps people build bridges to understanding. But what if people don’t want those bridges? Aha, says this entertaining guide: There’s a meta-problem for you….
In our current landscape of the postfactual, the loudest bellower is king. Enter Cheng (Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics, 2017, etc.), the scientist in residence at the Art Institute of Chicago—now there’s a good idea—and possessor of a formidable, mathematically inclined mind. Though the author aims to teach math, science, and formal logic as she progresses, she really means to help readers construct better arguments, which may turn out to be a world-saving proposition. There is a built-in advantage to using logic, she writes, in that it provides a framework for discovering what is true, and “one of the main reasons to have a clear framework for accessing truth is to be able to agree about things.” The notion of agreement will come into play late in the book, when Cheng analyzes the best kinds of arguments, which allow us to understand another person’s point of view. Until that point, there are theorems, axioms, and proofs to go through, for mathematically based logic hinges on such things as the union of sets (the place where two circles meet in a Venn diagram) and the proper application of analogy to any particular problem. The author isn’t exactly playful, but she pitches a few paradoxes as she moves along—one of them being the fact that, since logic doesn’t actually correspond to what we know as the real world, we have to “forget the pesky details that prevent things from behaving logically.” In other words, we have to think abstractly, which poses plenty of other challenges.
Though full of pauses, second glances, and head-scratches, this is a very welcome primer in logical thinking.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5416-7248-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Artificial intelligence expert Hofstadter (Gîdel, Escher, Bach, not reviewed, etc.) challenges conventional computer simulations of reasoning. These simulations don't begin to match the richness and flexibility of human thought, Hofstadter says: They're either ``brute force'' performances that simply take advantage of the computer's speed in considering already established options or programs that provide limited information that leads to a foregone conclusion. As an alternative, Hofstadter and his students create computer programs that model anagrams and analogies (remember those SAT questions: ``A is to B as C is to ...''?) as examples of human thinking and creativity. They create programs that allow the computer to search and discover candidates for the missing terms chosen from a ``coderack'' (Hofstadter loves puns). They also allow for ``slippage''—deviation from strict rules, which is what Hofstadter means by ``fluid concepts'' (for example, what is the solution to ``ABC is to XYZ as ABD is to ...?). Reading Hofstadter gives clues to how people—and presumably his computer programs- -slip around these barriers to come up with answers that are described variously as ``happy,'' ``low temperature,'' or ``urged'' with certain ``pressures.'' Hofstadter's admittedly complex writing style also has a wonderful colloquialism: You can hear him talking to his students, in part to get his own thoughts straight in the process. Reading this compendium of articles on games he and his AI researchers have programmed leads to consideration of human thought processes. In contrast to the programs of others in the field, Hofstadter's games are modest, played within small ``domains.'' But they open up ideas on how perception and concept formation are linked in parallel processing tracks in the brain. For Hofstadter, the art of programming a computer is not an end in itself but a means to further understanding the mind at work. An excellent and updated review of a major trailblazer's spin on AI. (Library of Science dual main selection)
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-05154-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
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