Cognitive Psychology In and Out of the Laboratory provides a student-centered approach for undergraduate courses in cognitive psychology. Kathleen Galotti′s accessible writing style and use of colorful real-life examples bring the full relevance of cognitive psychology into focus for students, and equips them to understand how theoretical principles apply to real-world problems and the complex functions of the human brain. The text features special coverage of the development of cognition from infancy through adolescence, and extensive coverage of gender, individual differences, and cross-cultural approaches to cognition.
I do not like the growing "casual" (ie dumbed down) trend of university textbooks. I don't want to hear about your students' projects, or your dogs! Call me old fashioned, but I like definitions, sidebars, histories... you know, textbook content. Not to mention ACADEMIC content.
This was definitely a good read overall. The author broke down different topics and explained cognitive psychology very well. However, sometimes I did find myself getting confused by the language used to describe certain concepts. Mind you, some of these theories were very abstract and difficult to explain anyways, but I had to mainly rely on my professor's PowerPoints to understand the concepts. But, I think this was still a good read for bringing all the concepts together and it worked as a good review after I had learned about the content in class!
Kind of hard to understand, but also dumbed down fairly well. Some parts are easier than others to read. I may just be on the slower end of the intellectual spectrum.
Not bad at all for a textbook. The writing is lively and engaging and the examples and studies that illustrate the material are well chosen and carefully explained. If I knew nothing of cognitive psychology, this book would have been a key component in the foundations of HCI course material. However, it turns out that I already know quite a bit about the subject through reading of Steven Pinker, Daniel Kahneman, Daniel M. Wegner, Daniel C. Dennett, Robert Kurzban, Sam Harris, and others. So, to be honest, I was a bit put off by the somewhat introductory tone of the book, but in fact I definitely learned some things about psychological concepts and approaches that had not been directly dealt with in my reading of the more popularized writing by the authors mentioned above.
Nothing special. Fairly wordy and awkward sentences sometimes. Decent for a textbook. Not so great for a cognition book. They should be aware of how detrimental syntactical grammar, story grammar, and BORING issues can affect a person's reading, attention, memory, etc. Oh hey, maybe I did learn something.