e-Book Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications download

Excellent!

the book is an great read for students looking for psychology book that brings detailed examples of cognitive terms, yes.

i bought this from a used merchant on and was very impressed about the price
btu the textbook itself isn't so great- the writing is pretty cramped and is not as easy to read compared to my other textbooks in college

John Anderson's "Cognitive Psychology and its Implications" is a psychology textbook and thus provides a comprehensive and easy to read explanation of cognitive psychology, which is defined by Anderson as "the science of how the mind is organized to produce intelligent thought and how it is realized in the brain" (p. 1). Anderson goes on to explain the ways in which cognitive psychology can be useful to non-cognitive psychologists - it has implications for clinical psychology, social psychology, political science, economics, sociology, and linguistics.

I enjoyed reading this book and found that it did a great job of taking complicated concepts and putting them in common language. For example, Chapter 3 is on Attention and Performance. There are many complicated theories about information processing in the auditory system, visual system, and central attention system. Anderson goes carefully through each domain (early-selection and late-selection theories in the auditory system, the binding problem and object-based attention in the visual system, and automaticity and executive control in central cognition) and provides very helpful examples, charts, and diagrams to illustrate the points being made.

This is the 6th edition of the book and it was published in 2005. As a 5-year-old book in a field that experiences rapid changes, I did find there was some updated information that was missing. I am a graduate psychology student who is interested in neuropsychology and cognitive impairments. Anderson does discuss this area and the technology that is used to detect impairment, such as the EEG, PET, and fMRI. However, there are more recent studies that have been developed to aid in diagnosis. For example, in the case of Alzheimer's Disease, FDDNP-PET scans have been used to detect plaques and tangles in the brain that are characteristic of this disease. I would hope this is an area that is explored in a future edition of the book.

I found the chapter on Expertise (Chapter 9) to be very interesting and applicable to the field of psychology and human development. This chapter explains how we develop skills and acquire information, and Anderson applies it to education and computer tutoring systems. In addition, understanding how humans learn and the differences between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, as well as tactical learning and strategic learning, can help development psychologists to aid children who are struggling in school or help individuals who are having difficulty understanding and learning new information.

I found Anderson's book to be a great resource for anyone interested in a basic understanding of cognitive psychology. Since it is a textbook, it is more helpful for beginners who want to learn the concepts than individuals who have a background in cognition or psychology, as it does not go incredibly in depth.

John Anderson's Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications works well as a textbook for both advanced undergraduate or graduate study. Anderson's brief introduction to his topic and overview of the history and foundations of cognitive psychology are not overly exhaustive in length; he provides the necessary backdrop for understanding the clearly-written chapters. After providing the historical context and biological basis for the field of cognitive psychology, Anderson delves into the finer details and provides digestible material on the critical aspects of cognition, such as perception, attention, language, performance, memory and skill acquisition.

As a graduate psychology student, I found much of the material to be familiar, as I have had an undergraduate course in cognition and graduate courses that covered some of the same material. As a result, my opinion that Anderson's text is an easy read and ideal for the introductory level may be influenced by my familiarity with the topic. However, the well-organized chapters, bold-typing and chapter summaries make the book easier to understand than you might think at first glance. Personally, what were most helpful were the graphs and illustrations throughout the text. As a visual learner, the numerous pictures helped me to grasp and digest the information in a way that was conducive to my personal learning style. Overall, I found Anderson's text informative and would recommend it to anyone who wants a good foundational introduction to cognitive psychology.

As a clinician, I naturally try to apply what I read to the real-world. For me, this allows me to make meaning of the text. In Anderson's work, what stood out to me were his discussions on schemas. A schema is some type of representation or "model" we have in our minds that helps us make sense of the world. As Anderson puts it, it is "categorical knowledge" (pg. 158). For example, when someone asks me to describe a house, I can reach back in my memory to my past experiences and schema for "houses" and describe typical features that are likely present: windows, roof, doors, etc. Schemas can be fascinating when you consider the clinical implications. Consider stereotypes and how our schemas contribute to prejudice and racism, or even our idea of what our role as a wife or husband should be. Having a schema or stored memory of similar ideas, events or interactions with others can cause us to apply that schema too generally and engage in prejudice or stereotyping. It can contribute to laying inaccurate characteristics on a person because of their gender or race, or it can even lead us to become complacent and fit into a role that we assume is "right" even when it isn't right for us. Being open to changing our schemas and being flexible is a large part of certain therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy. This flexibility allows us to learn new skills and adapt to healthier ways of behaving in certain situations that may contradict what we usually experience (i.e., the concept of "scripts", which as described in Anderson, are a type of schema based on an event or situation).

Think about it: let's say you start to get into a fight with your spouse and you think "here we go again" and the same words, phrases and actions come up again, just like the last 20 times you two had a fight. Perhaps it's no wonder you keep ending up at the same conclusion each time! You both are following a "script" you have for fighting with one another. Perhaps only when you choose to actively change these old patterns of interacting can you begin to come to a resolution. Schemas help us organize and make sense of the crazy amount of information that we are bombarded with every day. However, it sometimes can make us inflexible if we are not open to critically considering information or willing to adapt are typical ways of doing or thinking.

I am probably not a fair judge of this book since I loved the class that I used it for, and find the subject simply fascinating. But even for those who are less interested, I think Anderson does a good job of covering concepts with just the right amount of detail. The more difficult ideas are explained multiple times, which can be tedious if you understand them the first time, but very helpful if you don't. The only real complaint I have is the number of typos, especially in figures and graphs.

The main objective of the text is to advance an information processing approach to mind in conjunction with functional neuroscience. With that in mind, one shouldn't expect a historical treatment of the field in this text. Anderson is an excellent author, and he makes his points clear (if somewhat over-simplified). CP provides anyone interested in human learning and cognition, either from a strictly theoretical standpoint or a practical standpoint, an excellent resource for thinking about the nature and complexity of what we do when we think (in the broadest sense of the word). The chapter on problem solving is particularly interesting and will propel one to reconsider the significance of our descriptions of things that exist. See also "functional fixedness"

Nothing much to say except I had to buy this book for class and it was really easy to follow. It's not an intriguing novel or anything, but it gets the job done and the concepts are not hard to find or understand.