Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience

by E. Bruce Goldstein

Bruce Goldstein's COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY connects the study of cognition to your everyday life. This accessible book introduces you to landmark studies as well as the cutting-edge research that define this fascinating field. To help you further experiment with and understand the concepts in the text, you can use COGLAB 2.0: THE ONLINE COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY LABORATORY. Available at www.iChapters.com, COGLAB contains dozens of classic experiments designed to help you learn about cognitive concepts and how the mind works.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Textbooks, School, Science, Read For School, Reference

480 pages, Hardcover

First published July 18, 2010

About the author

E. BRUCE GOLDSTEIN is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona. He received the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Pittsburgh for his classroom teaching and textbook writing. He received his bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Brown University. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Biology Department at Harvard University before joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Goldstein has published papers on a wide variety of topics, including retinal and cortical physiology, visual attention and the perception of pictures. He is the author of SENSATION AND PERCEPTION, 10th Edition (Cengage, 2017), and the editor of the BLACKWELL HANDBOOK OF PERCEPTION (Blackwell, 2001) and the two-volume SAGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PERCEPTION (Sage, 2010).

Reviews

[Lauren McDonald]

Also actually a fantastic textbook for my cognitive psychology course, really informational with great examples, diagrams and explanations, but just don't want Goodreads recommending more like this to me haha got to keep the algorithm going

[Christina]

I read the whole damn thing from cover to cover so I'm sure as hell gonna include it in my book count for this year.
Good book, though, clear and not too dense, would probably be comprehensible even to someone who has not studied psychology before.

[Adrianna Grezak]

It has pictures

[Gabi]

J'ai enfin fini🙂 si ça avait pas été du cours, je l'aurais pas fini parce que c'est très répétitif, mais j'ai quand même appris des choses

[Emmi]

Read whole thing in two nights for an exam. Lost cognition while reading this and I can't feel my brain anymore.

[Amanda]

This the first actual textbook that I have reviewed, and overall, it was alright. There was a lot of good information included, and overall, the text was clear and easy to read. Some of the personal examples included by the author were informative, but many of them felt extraneous. The one issue that I noticed was that there were a lot more spelling, grammar, and typing errors than I normally come across in textbooks. Overall, this is not a bad choice for an introductory course in Cognitive Psychology.

[Brandon]

I used this as the textbook when I taught a class on cognitive psychology. It does a decent job summarizing the history and modern state of the field. It is well organized and easy to read. However, the writing is indirect at times and could be shortened (especially the fictional anecdotes). There are also several typos, some of which cause confusion (e.g., mislabeled figure numbers). I would use it again for my class, but I would not hesitate to switch to another textbook if there is a cheaper option.

[Jess]

Good textbook. Lots of images to break up the dread of how many terms there are to memorize in every page (typical psyc). It explains things well and tries to not make the book constant heavy reading, i had little difficulty understanding any concepts save the visual imagery chapter which was somewhat confusing. Per usual it was the memorizing of terms which was the challenge but the book has a good definition dictionary in the back which helps.

[Lizzy Li]

3.49 because i refuse to round up to a 4 for this one

yum psych

very digestible! cool facts and i liked the writing style -- it was very clear and easy to take notes on, with fun facts and good examples

too long <3

[Xeon]

Read and reviewed with Cognitive Psychology 7e by Sternberg and Cognitive Psychology 8e by Eysenck: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Conclusion: Sternberg is a comparable textbook to this, however I prefer Eysenck as it had the amount of depth I was seeking

[Aaron Wong]

Interesting case studies.

[Ben Ullman]

Old textbook. Was super interesting I find cognitive psychology to be a unreal field

[Jurij Fedorov]

It's largely focused on American students for flashcard memorization of psychology terms. There is enough decent research presented in clear ways. Yet we also find a lot of filler stuff as seen in American textbooks when authors are paid per word. Fictional stories introducing chapters. Do I need long-winded intros when the book is long by itself? And a bunch of terms clearly defined and explain often with zero studies to support the claim. Some researcher coined a certain psychology term, we get a full overview, the word is repeated on the side of the page, and then ... we move onto the next term. Which is a great shame as half the terms have good research behind them which we don't get to as the definitions take up most the pages and I get confused about what is actually valid and replicated research and what is just loose philosophy someone thought up in a day without ever testing it.

This makes the book great for learning terms. Perfect for American multiple choice exams. What does this word mean? Pick one of the 5 options. It's a weird way to test students as you actually don't show any knowledge this way. Yet is there a textbook for adults just interested in the science? Maybe someone in Europe wrote one as these exams are not overly popular here.

[Carley]

One of the more interesting and explanatory texts I've read

[Sarah]

Looooooved cognitive. Right up there with biopsych, for sure!

[Olivia]

3.5

[Michelle Spear]

Really well written textbook!

[Taylah Robinson]

Interesting but traumatic

[Dominique Hall]

This was a dope read. One of few textbooks I actually enjoyed consuming; never felt laborious or like I was being “forced” to get through assigned readings.

[estefi]

lo leí hasta el cap 4 nms, lo seguiré cuando tenga la traducción oficial jfnsjdsknd

[707 unknown]

dù dễ đọc nhưng nhận thức vẫn gây lú cho newbie mới học lần đầu như thường :D

[Mehrzad]

What I loved about this textbook was how it turns very complex ideas in cognitive psychology into manageable morsels; its comprehensiveness and the way it connects the ideas are second to none.

//

[Brianna]

It was a fine introduction to cognitive psychology. Nothing particularly stood out to me, but it was informative and gave me a good basis for the subject matter. I liked the interactive portions that allowed you to see what experiments would feel like. I disliked how many anecdotes there were, or rather how long they were, when I would prefer get into the important details.

[Sebastian Eisenheim]

Ich bin erstaunt, wie anschaulich, umfangreich, und kurzweilig ein Lehrbuch der Psychologie sein kann. Das Lehrbuch ist didaktisch äußerst gut aufbereitet, und bietet neben einer guten, verständlichen Strukturierung der Thematiken, auch Übungsaufgaben, um das gelesene zu rekapitulieren. Dienlich der Sache sind ebenso die ausgesuchten und cleveren Experimente, welche den Stoff einem näherbringen und leichter verständlich machen. Trotz des relativ großen Umfanges, fehlte mir hier ein wenig mehr Tiefe - so zum Beispiel wurde nicht, oder nur indirekt die Hyperkolumnen und die Blobs in den okulären Dominanzsäulen erwähnt, deren Entdeckung, wie auch die der K-Zellen, der Koniobahn, doch schon länger bekannt ist. Auch der ausführliche mathematische Teil fehlte hier. Nichtsdestotrotz sollte man nicht außer Acht lassen, dass es sich hierbei um einen Grundkurs handelt, und die Erwartungen dessen erfüllt dieses kleine Meisterwerk allemal.

[Arturo Perez]

Good enough book for teaching cognitive psychology. It covers most of the themes expected in a Cognitive psychology class, and historically relevant paradigms/research.

I feel it lacks information that would contextualize cognitive psychology within cognitive science, and it also lacks information that would inform students about the underlying assumptions of different cognitive psychology schools (e.g. physicalism vs dualism and other relevant philosophy of mind stuff)

That said, had a good experience using it for instructional purposes.

[Josh]

A decent introduction to the field of cognitive psychology. Provides a clear overview of most of the major areas of research as well as priming one to read the literature in the field. A lot of the research is basic and not exactly groundbreaking but that's probably to be expected given how little we really know about how the mind functions.

[Emma]

Interesting and important facts, somewhat pedagogic layout with a bit of self test questions, pictures and graphs. Summaries are a bit too long. The stories about Rachel were terrible and boring. Who orders a pizza with broccoli on it?

[Mills College Library]

153 G6245 2011

[Beyond9K]

pretty good book, most of it was common sense though

[Jamie]

Typo on page 304
"For exam0ple"