Book review: Scientists as children. Words, Thoughts, and Theories. Alison Gopnik and Andrew N. Meltzoff. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998. No. of pages 268. ISBN 0-262-57126-9 (paperback).
✍ Scribed by Grant Gutheil
- Book ID
- 101279355
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 50 KB
- Volume
- 13
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Ergonomics, organized by Cran®eld College of Aeronautics at Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in October 1996'. Volume 1, dealing with transportation systems, contains 51 papers that have been grouped into ®ve sections. Section 1 contains 16 papers pertaining to cockpit interface design issues. Section 2 has six papers on air trac control. Section 3 contains 14 papers on various aspects of aviation psychology. Section 4 organizes nine papers under the heading of Road User Behaviour', and the ®fth section contains six papers under the title Transportation Pot Pourri'. Volume 2 organizes 59 papers under the area of job and product design. The papers in this volume are contained within ®ve sections: Job Design and Analysis (10 papers); Learning and Training (8 papers); Medical Ergonomics (5 papers); Applied Cognitive Psychology (17 papers); and Product Design and Evaluation (19 papers).
As with any set of conference proceedings, the papers within them vary widely in regard to quality and completeness. Many of the papers describe research eorts that were still in progress at the time of the conference and so the results are incomplete (and sometimes inconclusive). For some of the papers the methodology is inadequately described, making it dicult to know how the authors achieved the results that are reported. Despite the title, the potential reader should not be misled into believing that he or she will be provided with a foundational introduction to either engineering psychology or cognitive ergonomics. This is not to say that there is no useful information contained in these papers. On the contrary, some of the papers summarize important ®ndings and research in the ®eld of human factors. However, as with any conference proceedings, for every paper that a particular reader will ®nd useful, there will be ten (or more) that are not useful or of little interest. It is the belief of this reviewer that some papers worthy of publication will eventually ®nd their way to the open scienti®c literature and appear in peer-reviewed journals; the potential reader may want to wait.
It is suggested by the publisher that both volumes will be useful to applied and occupational psychologists, instructors, instructional developers, equipment and systems designers, researchers, government regulatory personnel, human resource managers, selection specialists, pilots, air trac controllers, and aviation and ground transportation operation managers. In fact, this may be true. However, the potential reader should consider the cost of obtaining this usefulness. For the most part, the reader will ®nd these volumes `full of sound and fury, signifying nothing' (or at least very little).