Chaos and Complexity in Psychology

Stephen J. Guastello is Professor of Psychology at Marquette University, where his teaching and research specialize in industrial-organizational psychology, human factors engineering and ergonomics, and statistics. He is the author of Chaos, Catastrophe, and Human Affairs, Managing Emergent Phenomena, and Human Factors Engineering and Ergonomics and is the founding editor of the journal Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences. Matthijs Koopmans is an officer of educational research and evaluation at the Academy for Educational Development, Center for School and Community Services in New York. He has published papers in the journal Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences and served as president of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences from 2005 to 2007. David Pincus is an Assistant Professor in the psychology department at Chapman University, California, where his teaching, clinical and research interests focus on applications of nonlinear dynamical systems theory to understanding interpersonal processes underlying healthy exchanges of information. He is the author of Guided Imagery for Pain Management and is co-executive producer and writer of - and appears in - Life Right for Kids, a video-based program aimed at helping families address child weight-management.

• 1. Introduction to nonlinear dynamics and complexity Stephen J. Guastello and Larry S. Liebovitch; 2. Collective intelligence: observations and models William Sulis; 3. Neurodynamics and electro-cortical activity Tullio Minelli; 4. Psychophysics Robert A. M. Gregson; 5. Temporal patterns in perceptual behavior: implications for dynamics structure D. J. Aks; 6. Embodied and embedded: the dynamics of extracting perceptual visual invariants Patrice Renaud, Sylvain Chartier and Guillaume Albert; 7. Origins of order in cognitive activity Geoff Hollis, Heidi Kloos and Guy C. Van Orden; 8. Nonlinear dynamical systems in developmental psychology Paul van Geert; 9. Developmental psychopathology: maladaptive and adaptive attractors in children's close relationships Erika S. Lunkenheimer and Thomas J. Dishion; 10. Psychopathology: a nonlinear systems view Wolfgang Tschacher and Uli Junghan; 11. Coherence, complexity, and information flow: self-organizing processes in psychotherapy David Pincus; 12. The dynamics of human experience: fundamentals of dynamical social psychology Robin R. Vallacher and Andrej Nowak; 13. Group dynamics: adaptation, coordination, and the emergence of leaders Stephen J. Guastello; 14. Organizational psychology Kevin Dooley; 15. Complexity, evolution and organizational behavior Peter Allen; 16. Agent-based modeling and dynamic network analysis Terrill Frantz and Kathleen Carley; 17. Epilogue: psychology at the edge of chaos Matthjs Koopmans.

'Just as did Henri Bergson's L'Evolution Créatrice in 1907, James Gleick's Chaos in 1987 crystallized a community of concern for nonlinear dynamic systems. Major progress thereafter is documented in this collection of essays. The term 'nonlinear' designates any departure from the bedrock of human experience in linear causality and expresses the fact that, while there is neither a single nonlinear science, nor can there be, there is mutual enrichment. The fundamental insight endures, that given the right initial conditions, order emerges from disorder in defiance of the laws of thermodynamics. These chapters provide a new set of initial conditions for the growth of shared knowledge and competence among scholars addressing 'NDS' in psychology.' Walter J. Freeman, University of California, Berkeley