Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook

by Michael W. Eysenck, Mark T. Keane

This fifth edition of the best-selling international cognitive psychology textbook has been substantially updated and restructured to reflect new developments in cognitive psychology, and made more student-friendly. Established approaches covered in depth Extensive new material in this edition Throughout, the new material is fully integrated with more traditional approaches to create a comprehensive, coherent and totally current overview of perception, attention, memory, concepts, language, problem solving, judgement and reasoning. A two-colour design, plus a rich array of supplementary multimedia materials, make this edition more accessible and entertaining for students. The multimedia materials

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Science, Textbooks, Reference, Neuroscience, School

656 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Xeon · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know those Arby's sandwiches overflowing with slices of roast beef? Yes. That is what cognitive psychology is like. Straight meat. All sorts of subjects and disciplines intersecting with it. Overflowing with useful information.

The origins of today's cognitive psychology mostly lie in the first conference on (and usage of the term) artificial intelligence in 1956 at Dartmouth and later MIT. Around this sliver of time, Miller published his paper on approximately seven items being the capacity of human processing, Broadbent proposed his filter model of attention, Simon and Newell created their computer program Logic Theorist with elements of their eventual work on problem solving, and Chomsky critiqued behaviorism and Skinner with elements of his eventual universal grammar for linguistics. T'was indeed a magical time.

Inspired by analogies to computers, the information processing approach is used to understand the mind. This is why cognitive psychology is set with being about perception, attention, memory, language, and thinking (problem solving and creativity, decision making, judgment, and reasoning)—in that order. However,

"Intelligence is a concept that can be viewed as tying together all of cognitive psychology." —Sternberg

"The first author remembers clearly a conversation with Endel Tulving (a leading memory researcher) in the mid-1980s. He said one criterion he used when evaluating a textbook on cognitive psychology was the amount of coverage of consciousness." —Eysenck

intelligence and consciousness are two topics which are accumulations.

Supporting cognitive psychology, three other major approaches used throughout are neuropsychology, neuroscience, and (computational) cognitive science.

So then, what did I perceive, pay attention to, remember, read, think, and experience about cognitive psychology?

In terms of perception, I must admit, there were some wicked pictures and diagrams: https://imgur.com/a/KWuPo2j



In terms of paying attention, I was most engrossed in conceptual knowledge for declarative memory and then problem solving and creativity. I took away much for my piece on philosophy. Some of my favorite ideas I discovered were production systems, semanticization of episodic memory, automatization of tasks, prospective memory, and isomorphic problems.

In terms of what I remember, upon testing myself with the practice questions on the textbook companion website, my performance was best for learning memory and forgetting, everyday memory, judgment and decision making, problem solving and expertise, and motion perception and action. Many of my errors were a result of consistently paying least attention to and thereby least remembering neuropsychology, such as specific illnesses, injuries, and parts of the brain.

In terms of what I read, I read Cognitive Psychology 5e by Goldstein, then Cognitive Psychology 7e by Sternberg, then Cognitive Psychology 8e by Eysenck. Unfortunately, I am not sure there is much utility in analyzing the underlying cognitive processes of language while reading about cognitive psychology. More on comparing the textbooks later.

In terms of what I thought, a few things:

I do believe cognitive psychology itself is a means of problem solving, a good decision, and makes adequate judgments and reasoning about judgment and reasoning. To specify, the experimental attempts to solve the problems of problem solving provide established certainties on the fundamental principles of such, whether that be steps to insight or the development of expertise. Making frequentist judgments from evolutionary and natural settings that performance would be better on problems utilizing frequencies rather than probabilities (Giberenzer and Hoffrage 1995), among other things, alludes to how the probabilities are paramount for the accuracy about the judgments of judgments. Tis science afterall. On reasoning, there were indeed theories on deductive reasoning that inevitably utilized deductive reasoning (Johnson-Laird 1983), or hypotheses about hypotheses (Sanbonmatsu et al 2015). However, here, I must observe that while I learned cognitive psychology from the textbooks, I learned science and reasoning from the evaluation parts in Eysenck. After the presentation of every theory, model, or approach, a variety of pros and cons were promptly presented. To me those parts were valuable, every single time. For these reasons, besides delving into the behavioral economics and psychology of decision making, is why the study of such may be a good decision.

Given the nature of the subject, it was nice there were so many immediate demonstrations or experiments possible for a reader to do. Among textbooks, I think this is very unique.

After reading, I have incredible respect for cognitive psychology. Sure, "Approximately 300 cognitive architectures have been proposed over the years (Kotseruba & Tsotsos, 2018)." Sure, "researchers identified approximately 70 different definitions of intelligence (Legg & Hutter, 2007)." Sure, "There are more models of parsing than you can shake a stick at." However, it is astonishing how much can be discovered about human cognition with just some timers, priming, and eye tracking. In all, there were some really clever experiments.

I am now in the belief that cognitive psychology should be required reading and one of the first things one learns for the study of philosophy. This is real world epistemology and logic, experimentally validated.

When it was written "know thyself" at the entrance of the temples of Delphi in ancient Greece, I believe cognitive psychology would come close to being a solid approach. I hope I have succeeded in acting in accordance with such.

[Jacob Alexander Ravn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult subjects that are hard to digest as is. This “students handbook” makes it harder. So well done. Put it through ChatGPT to save yourself time. You won’t miss out on the so called complexity of the concepts. Don’t know who benefits from this other than academia conserving the idea that academics is for the few. These are intuitive concepts, no need to overcomplicate it. It’s lazy, vague and messy. I’m also not that smart.

[زهرا نجاری · Rating 1 out of 5]

برای این ترجمه حتی یک امتیاز هم زیاده. افتضاح بودن ترجمه به کنار، کتاب حتی ویراستاری درست نداره. اکثر اصطلاحات تخصصی بدون اشاره به معادل انگلیسی شون توی متن نوشته شدن و تو نمیتونی بفهمی این کلمه ی عجیب غریبی که مترجم تصمیم گرفته استفاد کنه دقیقا داره به چی اشاره میکنه!!!

توصیه میکنم اگر زبان انگلیسی تون خوبه، متن اصلی رو گیر بیارید و بخونید. چون این کتاب کمکی بهتون نمیکنه

[Navi · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely competant take on Cognitive Psychology, was chosen by my lecturer as a recommended read and I must agree.

Covering almost all the essential areas of cognition,with a subtle humourous undertone. And connects the chapters beautifully, after all cognition is not unitary.

Although,presentation of some key sub-categorises should have been better signposted rather than just making it bold. It made revision that bit harder.

If you want a 1:1 or an insight into the way we "think" this is the best book.

[Mona Bahgat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible book about a wonderful subject. More cognitive neuroscience than anything else, this book is more of a review of recent research than anything else. Considering that the main topics here are how issues of attention and perception are handled in the brain, the authors fail miserable to make use of their learnings to engage or educate the reader. Honestly, I would opt for a root canal over this book. Too bad, because the field is interesting and worthy of study. Just not with this book as a guide.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very useful book for those interested in the subject.

A lot is covered in this one, allowing you to gain information in a range of areas. As always, with books like this, I wouldn’t recommend it as your sole referencing point but it is useful alongside other books to help you gain more knowledge on the subject.

[Adela · Rating 2 out of 5]

jakoze precetla jsem to ale byl to fakt pain

[Emily Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really long. Comprehensive. Glad I'm done with this class

[Anne Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apart from containing the main processes, models, theories and terms in cognitive psychology, this book also includes great examples from everyday life and there is an official website, where one can access flashcards and quizzes from the books content.
The reason why I rated it four stars is because of the length.

[Jane Richardson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful book. Part of the required reading for my MSc in Psychology. Impenetrable, makes what is an interesting subject so dull and confusing.

Honestly reading it has taken more than double the allocated reading time because it’s so difficult to comprehend and to stay focussed.

I’m currently searching for a better alternative.

[Gemma Bagtas]

i think i learned a lot if i read this book

[Yinxue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Both layout and writing felt dull and uninspiring. Hughly informative though compared to some other cognitive text.

[Margarita Aleksandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the 8th edition.

This textbook is a good example of how more information does not always equal better.

[kocham panie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exists....

[An Te · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful primer on a fascinating topic. The sections are clear to read, well-presented in a tight and easy-to-read typeface. There are plenty of references to seminal literature throughout the various sessions. The section on cognitive biases was handy but I would have liked more references into this area. For what it is worth, it is a worthy first foray into this area of psychology.

[tbb03 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this as exam preparation for one of my courses at uni. Even though the topic is very interesting, it was hard for me to grasp most of the content. In my opinion, the style was very dry, there were too many empirical studies and not enough examples. Also, the layout was quite dull and not helpful at all. Some more diagrams and sidenotes would've been nice.

[Ajeet]

good book

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

[6th edition, 2010; read at SISSA's library, Trieste]

[Eve Lumerto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in a hurry to read this for an exam, but it was so interesting that most things stayed in my head really well.