Improvisation teachers have long known that the human mind could be trained to be effortlessly spontaneous and intuitive. Drinko explores what these improvisation teachers knew about improvisation's effects on consciousness and cognition and compares these theories to current findings in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy.

Discover the ten things highly creative people do differently.Is it possible to make sense of something as elusive as creativity? Based on psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman’s groundbreaking research and Carolyn Gregoire’s popular article in the Huffington Post, Wired to Create offers a glimpse inside the “messy minds” of highly creative people. Revealing the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology, along with engaging examples of artists and innovato...

What is it that accounts for the differences between musical beginners, advanced music makers, and world class performers? Virtually everyone likes music and has the capacity to be musical in some way (despite what some may say about themselves). Yet far fewer people come to be so involved with it that they identify themselves as musicians, and fewer still become musicians of international class. Psychology for Musicians provides the basis for answering this question. Examining th...

Learning To Sing is a thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion of the principles of voice coach and counselor Jennifer Hamady's innovative teaching method. In this succinct work, Jennifer provides an academic look at the psychology, physiology, and neuroscience of the concepts presented in her book "The Art of Singing: Discovering and Developing Your True Voice", further revealing the 'how' and 'why' of her method's effectiveness. Following an overview of the common roles of the intelle...

A luminous exploration of the nature of thoughts, from daydreams to the voices in our headsAt the moment you caught sight of this book, what were you thinking? Was your thought a stream of sensations? Or was it a voice in your head? Did you ask yourself, "I wonder what that's about?" Did you answer? And what does it mean if you did?When someone says they hear voices in their head, they are often thought to be mentally ill. But, as Charles Fernyhough argues ...

An expert guide to how conversation works, from how we know when to speak to why huh is a universal wordWe all had teachers who scolded us over the use of um, uh-huh, oh, like, and mm-hmm. But as linguist N. J. Enfield reveals in How We Talk, these "bad words" are fundamental to language.Whether we are speaking with the clerk at the store, our boss, or our spouse, language is dependent on things as comm...

A key interdisciplinary concept in our understanding of social interaction across creative and cultural practices, kinesthetic empathy describes the ability to experience empathy merely by observing the movements of another human being. Encouraging readers to sidestep the methodological and disciplinary boundaries associated with the arts and sciences, Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices offers innovative and critical perspectives on topics ranging from art to s...

This new edition of Drama as Therapy presents a coherent review of the practice and theory of Dramatherapy. With a unique combination of practical guidance, clinical examples and research vignettes this fully revised second edition considers developments in the field over the last decade and researches the impact of the 'core processes' on clinical practice.The book shows how Dramatherapy can be used with a wide range of clients and applied to their individual needs. Thera...

This book puts forward an authenticity-centred approach to the design of materials for language learning. The premise of the approach is that language learning should be based on authentic materials drawn from a variety of genres found in the target language culture, and that the learning tasks involving these materials should be correspondingly authentic, by entailing interactions that are consistent with the original communicative purpose of the authentic text. It provides both a theoret...

Keith Swanwick explores the psychological and sociological dimensions of musical experience and the implications of these for children's development and music education in schools and colleges. Music is seen, with the other arts, as contributing to the growth of mind, with deep psychological roots in play. Swanwick examines the ways in which children make their own music, and confirms that there is an observable sequence of development. His insights into musical experience help to draw tog...

The Psychology of Creative Writing takes a scholarly, psychological look at multiple aspects of creative writing, including the creative writer as a person, the text itself, the creative process, the writer's development, the link between creative writing and mental illness, the personality traits of comedy and screen writers, and how to teach creative writing. This book will appeal to psychologists interested in creativity, writers who want to understand more about the magic behind their ...

First Published in 1979. Designed for all music teachers, this book provides a careful and clear examination of the fundamental concepts involved in music. Keith Swanwick investigates questions such as: What is music? Is music meaningful? Does music refine our feelings and emotions? If so, how? The discussion of questions forms a conceptual framework which will motivate further thinking and development in music education.