COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY: A Student’s Handbook by Michael W.Eysenck & Mark T. Keane  pdf –  Sixth Edition 

We are now several years into the third millennium, and there is more interest than ever in unravelling the mysteries of the human brain and mind. This interest is reflected in the recent upsurge of scientific research within cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. We will start with cognitive psychology.

It is concerned with the internal processes involved in making sense of the environment, and deciding what action might be appropriate. These processes include attention, perception, learning, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and thinking. We can define cognitive psychology as involving the attempt to understand human cognition by observing the behaviour of people performing various cognitive tasks.

The aims of cognitive neuroscientists are often similar to those of cognitive psychologists. However, there is one important difference —cognitive neuroscientists argue convincingly that we need to study the brain as well as behaviour while people engage in cognitive tasks. After all, the internal processes involved in human cognition occur in the brain, and we have increasingly sophisticated ways of studying the brain in action. We can define cognitive neuroscience as involving the attempt to use information about behaviour and about the brain to understand human cognition.

As is well known, cognitive neuroscientists use brain-imaging techniques. Note that the distinction between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience is often blurred – the term “cognitive psychology” can be used in a broader sense to include cognitive neuroscience. Indeed, it is in that broader sense that it is used in the title of this book.
There are several ways in which cognitive neuroscientists explore human cognition. First, there are brain-imaging techniques, of which PET (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) (both discussed in detail later) are probably the best known. Second, there are electrophysiological techniques involving the recording of electrical signals generated by the brain (also discussed later).

Third, many cognitive neuroscientists study the effects of brain damage on human cognition. It is assumed that the patterns of cognitive impairment shown by brain-damaged patients can tell us much about normal cognitive functioning and about the brain areas responsible for different cognitive processes.

The huge increase in scientific interest in the workings of the brain is mirrored in the popular media — numerous books, films, and television programmes have been devoted to the more accessible and/or dramatic aspects of cognitive neuroscience. Increasingly, media coverage includes coloured pictures of the brain, showing clearly which parts of the brain are most activated when people perform various tasks.

There are four main approaches to human cognition (see the box below). Bear in mind, however, that researchers increasingly combine two or even more of these approaches. A considerable amount of research involving these approaches is discussed throughout the rest of this book. We will shortly discuss each of these approaches in turn, and you will probably find it useful to refer back to this chapter when reading other chapters. You may find the box on page 28 especially useful, because it provides a brief summary of the strengths and limitations of all four approaches.

Contents

Preface

1. Approaches to human cognition Introduction

• Experimental cognitive psychology
• Cognitive neuroscience: the brain in action
• Cognitive neuropsychology
• Computational cognitive science
• Comparison of major approaches
• Outline of this book
• Chapter summary
• Further reading

PART I: VISUAL PERCEPTION AND ATTENTION
2. Basic processes in visual perception Introduction

• Brain systems
• Two visual systems: perception and action
• Colour vision
• Perception without awareness
• Depth and size perception
• Chapter summary
• Further reading

3. Object and face recognition

• Introduction
• Perceptual organisation
• Theories of object recognition
• Cognitive neuroscience approach to object recognition
• Cognitive neuropsychology of object recognition
• Face recognition
• Visual imagery
• Chapter summary
• Further reading

4. Perception, motion, and action Introduction 

• Direct perception
• Visually guided action
• Planning-control model
• Perception of human motion
• Change blindness
• Chapter summary
• Further reading

5. Attention and performance Introduction

• Focused auditory attention
• Focused visual attention
•  Visual search
• Cross-modal effects
• Divided attention: dual-task performance
• Automatic processing
• Chapter summary Further reading

PART II:  MEMORY
6. Learning, memory, and forgetting Introduction

• Architecture of memory
• Working memory
• Levels of processing Implicit learning
• Theories of forgetting
• Chapter summary
• Further reading

7. Long-term memory systems

• Episodic vs. semantic memory
• Episodic memory
• Semantic memory
• Non-declarative memory
• Beyond declarative and non-declarative memory: amnesia
• Long-term memory and the brain
• Chapter summary
• Further reading

8. Everyday memory 

• Autobiographical memory
• Prospective memory
• Chapter summary
• Further reading

PART III: LANGUAGE
9. Reading and speech perception

• Reading: introduction
• Word recognition
• Reading aloud
• Reading: eye-movement research
• Listening to speech
• Theories of spoken word recognition
• Cognitive neuropsychology

10. Language comprehension Introduction

• Parsing
• Theories of parsing
• Pragmatics
• Individual differences: working memory capacity
• Discourse processing
• Story processing

11. Language production

• Speech as communication
• Planning of speech
• Basic aspects of spoken language
• Speech errors
• Theories of speech production
• Cognitive neuropsychology: speech production
• Writing: the main processes
• Spelling

PART IV: THINKING AND REASONING
12. Problem solving and expertise

• Transfer of training and analogical reasoning
• Expertise
• Deliberate practice
• Chapter summary
• Further reading

13. Judgement and decision making

• Judgement research
• Decision making
• Basic decision making
• Complex decision making

14. Inductive and deductive reasoning

• Inductive reasoning
• Deductive reasoning
• Theories of deductive reasoning
• Brain systems in thinking and reasoning
• Informal reasoning
• Are humans rational?

PART V: BROADENING HORIZONS
15. Cognition and emotion

• Appraisal-theories
• Emotion regulation
• Multi-level theories
• Mood and cognition
• Anxiety, depression, and cognitive biases

16. Consciousness Introduction

• Measuring conscious experience
• Is consciousness unitary?
• Chapter summary

Further reading
Glossary
References
Author
Subject index

Language: English
Pages: 1032