Principles of Cognition: Finding Minds

by Eduardo Mercado III

A comprehensive overview of what psychologists now know about the nature of cognition

Principles of Cognition provides students with an invaluable introduction to the modern science of cognition, blending invaluable insights from behavioral and neuroscientific studies of humans and other animals with unique examples, cutting-edge research summaries, and real-world applications. This accessible textbook builds on the legacy of psychologist William James by emphasizing not only the form cognition takes in laboratory research but also the functional dynamics of cognitive processes in everyday life and the ways they vary across individuals and species. Using an integrative approach that highlights the relevance of cognition across psychological disciplines, it engages students by showing how cognition emerges over time, how cognitive abilities can be improved, and how thinking can be upended by something as simple as falling in love.

Discusses topics in cognition rarely covered by other textbooks, including perception of time and space, consciousness, animal cognition, mathematical and reading skills, emotions, intelligence, generalization, and social cognitionEmphasizes learning and its interactions with memory and cognitionFeatures practical applications from cognitive research in every chapterConnects topics across chapters to promote retention and critical thinkingDraws on the latest experimental, naturalistic, and applied researchIntegrates findings about animals and children with traditional studies of adults to develop a more neurally grounded framework for thinking about the mechanisms of cognitionAn ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate classrooms

Kindle Edition

Published August 20, 2024

About the author

​Eduardo Mercado is a Professor of Psychology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, where he also served as Director of the Center for Cognitive Science. His scientific studies of neural and cognitive plasticity in humans and other animals seek to clarify how cortical networks constrain an individual’s ability to learn and generalize new concepts. Eduardo completed his Ph.D. in Psychology and M.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Hawaii in 1998, and postdoctoral training in computational neuroscience at Rutgers-Newark. His research has been supported by NSF, NIH, and Earthwatch. Eduardo has published extensively on the singing behavior of whales and the cognitive abilities of dolphins and children with autism spectrum disorder. He is a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Eduardo has strived to advance cognitive theory by quantifying behavior in novel ways and by collecting evidence that directly tests current assumptions about how minds work.