Cognitive Psychology

Product Details

Synopsis

This textbook in cognitive psychology provides a framework for the understanding of key concepts, describes research methods, and outlines the main puzzles, problems, questions, and controversies in the field. Chapters concentrate on various aspects of acquiring information, memory, language, understanding, and thinking. In this edition, the material on each of these topics has been updated, the chapters covering memory have been reorganized, and the chapter on language acquisition has been removed. The three authors are researchers and teachers at American universities.

Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

In this update of the 1992 edition, Medin (Northwestern U.) and Ross (U. of Illinois) address the complexity of the cognitive processing of human "possibilities, information, and experience" (per the title of Chapter 1) and "approaches to the study of the mind" (Chapter 2). All the usual psychological domains<-->and their computer analogs<-- >are implicated: learning, memory, language, and thinking. Includes a summary, key terms, recommended readings, and references. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Biography

Douglas Medin (Ph.D., University of South Dakota) taught at the Rockefeller University, University of Illinois, and the University of Michigan before assuming his current position as CAS Visiting Committee Research and Teaching Professor at Northwestern University. Best known for his research on concepts and categorization, his recent research interests have extended to decision making, cross-cultural studies of reasoning and categorization, and cognitive dimensions of resource use. He teaches courses in cognitive psychology, psychology of thinking and reasoning, decision making, and culture and cognition. He is the editor of the journal Cognitive Psychology and is a past editor of the Academic Press series, Psychology of Learning and Motivation.

Brian Ross received his Sc.B. in Psychology from Brown University and his M.A. from Yale University before receiving his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He teaches at the University of Illinois, where he is Professor of Psychology and also in the Beckman Institute. He teaches courses in cognitive psychology, the psychology of thinking, introductory statistics, problem solving, and mathematical models of memory. His research has examined issues in categorization, problem solving, learning and memory. He is series editor for The psychology of learning and motivation, as well as associate editor of the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Arthur Markman received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Illinois after completing his Sc.B. in Cognitive Science at Brown University. He worked at Northwestern University and Columbia University before moving tothe University of Texas at Austin, where he is now Professor of Psychology and Marketing. He teaches courses in cognitive psychology, research methods and statistics, reasoning, and decision making and knowledge representation, and he supervises the honors program. His research has explored similarity, categorization, and decision making. He served as Executive Officer of the Cognitive Science Society from 2001-2003.