Unity and modularity in the mind and the self

"This book explores the relationships between intellectual development, self, and personality and proposes a comprehensive theory. It addresses how humans become aware of themselves, how the various products of self-awareness interrelate to produce an integrated self-system, and how this includes the domains of cognition and personality.".

"The book answers these questions on the basis of four empirical studies. The first highlights the development and organisation of self-awareness in regard to cognitive abilities, personality, and thinking styles from 10 to 15 years of age. The second highlights how children's actual cognitive abilities and self-representations interact with their parents' respective representations. The third explores the relationships between general reasoning and processing abilities and the various domain-specific abilities and characteristics examined in the other studies. The final study examines the place of the Big Five factors of personality - extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience - in the self-system.

Finally, a general model is proposed which specifies the modular and the transmodular aspects of the mind."--BOOK JACKET.