This chapter reviews the grandparent–grandchild relationship when grandparents are healthy, when they contract chronic illness and are in need of care, and when they are in the process of dying. It includes the particular aspects of health because each has the potential to play an important role in the grandparent–grandchild relationship. For example, as some leisure activities require a certain level of physical ability, research on leisure and grandparent–grandchildren time together may reflect grandparents’ health. Finally, the cognitive health of grandparents may play a role in how grandparents and their grandchildren interact. The process of aging is associated with a broad range of unique and often simultaneous declines, including physical, cognitive, and psychological changes. As age-associated illnesses arise and develop there may be instances, although not common, where grandchildren are so involved in their grandparents’ life that they become a caregiver for their ill grandparent.

It is not uncommon for children, adolescents, and families to seek counselors’ services when they are in crisis. Despite a growing literature base in school crisis prevention, intervention, and preparedness, there is a relatively scant literature base addressing mental health crisis intervention for professional counselors. This chapter addresses elements pertinent to crisis intervention, including mandated reporting, and associated trauma or grief. Children understand and process grief and trauma differently based on developmental and cognitive ability levels. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for children to experience traumatic events before reaching adulthood. As an example, international studies document that child sexual abuse, physical abuse, or domestic violence affects approximately 25% of children. War, natural disasters, motor vehicle accidents, violence, terrorist acts, and refugee experiences can all contribute to trauma reactions. Regrettably, if left untreated, complications associated with unresolved trauma or grief can last well into adulthood.

Investigating the human mind as an abstract concept is very difficult. Exploring its biological foundations—especially consciousness—is an even more daunting task. If developing a map of the mind is the final frontier of the life sciences, the cartography of consciousness will be its last and most important accomplishment. The study of the conscious mind alone could not lead to a complete understanding of the brain. Consciousness and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) have long been intimately related, albeit under a different name. Whereas the field of neurobiology has utilized the term consciousness to denote the processes of sensation, perception, learning, cognition, emotion, somatosensory integration, and memory, the discipline of psychology has chosen to use the term information processing. EMDR has evolved into a comprehensive therapeutic approach guided by the adaptive information processing model. This introductory chapter discusses consciousness and EMDR and provides a brief description about the book.

Within the animal kingdom, sociality is on a giant continuum, with a large degree of diversity in how social, with whom, and how complex those interactions are among conspecifics. This chapter explores in greater depth some of the advanced ways that animals engage with one another. As reader sees, there appears to be a correlation between sociality and cognition. Knowing something about the depth (or lack thereof) of a species’ social behavior allows researchers to contextualize and better understand cognitive abilities such as theory of mind, problem solving, and referential signaling in communication. By learning from others, one can effectively and efficiently interact with the environment. One very special way humans and animals also use social cues are called social referencing, which involves learning from others’ emotional responses. These responses, like a grimace after the first bite of a disgusting meal, act as signals that communicate information to social partners.

While animal cognition researchers may look strange at playing parrot vocalizations on loud speakers in the jungle or presenting gorillas with trays of colored shapes, there very much is a method to our madness. That method is the scientific method whose steps are to develop a research question, design appropriate methodologies, collect and analyze data, then share the findings with the scientific community. This chapter presents some considerations and methods for studying animal cognition with the hope that, the reader will use some of them in their future observations of animal behavior—both human and nonhuman. Animal cognition is a branch of psychology, the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Some of the most famous and informative studies of animal cognition have been through the case study method. Most animal cognition research is conducted by scientists who are affiliated with colleges and universities.

The rise of social media and popular press articles on the Internet has done wonders to make the field of animal cognition more visible and accessible to those outside of academia. In addition to animal cognition findings being used to change how we legally treat and view animals, the field of animal cognition has ushered in an exciting shift in the value of the work. Not everyone in animal cognition’s history has subscribed to practice of a diverse interdisciplinary perspective, and especially not psychologists who were trained and working during the behaviorist movement. Humans have changed the planet in the last few hundred years into something that is almost unrecognizable. For a long time, feelings of human superiority prevented us from learning about other species for the sake of learning about them. This concluding chapter discusses technological advancements; interdisciplinary collaborations; and human induced rapid environmental change.

For centuries, philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and many others have attempted to define consciousness in humans. Depending upon who you are, what your agenda is, and how you were trained, definitions for consciousness will vary. This chapter jumps right into the hotly debated area of animal consciousness. It takes an in-depth look at how philosophers and scientists have defined consciousness, specific cognitive abilities that might signal consciousness, and which animals can be said to have them, or a version of them. The main topics covered include theory of mind, self-awareness, and emotions. Happy, the first elephant documented to behave as if she recognized herself in a mirror, as well as the important implications of this finding, is the subject of the animal spotlight. The human application section walks through how theory of mind develops in children and the ways developmental psychologists can determine whether a child has mastered it.

This chapter addresses the overall flexibility of the animal mind. It discusses about instincts; planning and forethought. The cognitive processes necessary to project into the future epitomize a highly flexible mind. Nonetheless, evolutionarily speaking, mental time travel may not be useful for all animals. Following this, the chapter discusses problem solving; play behavior; and innovation. For centuries, there have been those who believe animals are mindless behaving machines. One probably does not think that, or one would not be reading, but where is the line between instinct and cognitive behavior? Do animals plan out their actions in advance, play, and create? One creative crow, and her remarkable ability to problem solve and use tools, are featured in the animal spotlight. In human application, it discusses the difficult question of how to measure creativity in humans and tips for how can find and increase creativity and innovation in one’s own life.

Personality and emotional well-being are features of an animal’s behavior that are very real but have historically not been considered cognitive. Individual differences act as ever-present filters, influencing the cognitive processes that we have shared up to this point. Including this chapter at the end of the book should serve as to contextualize all of the findings. In the human psychology world, personality is considered someone’s enduring or stable, predictable ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving over time and across context. The chapter highlights some of the findings and methodological considerations that must be made at each of these stages. It provides multiple examples of how carefully researchers must work to ensure that the labels they assign to behaviors accurately reflect what they’re seeing, that the tasks themselves correspond to those labels, and that the labels say something about a particular core personality trait.