Cognitive Psychology

Book excerpt: This book brings cognition to life by demonstrating the endless application of cognitive psychology to everyday life. While introducing the current research in this rapidly changing field, the text also introduces critical thinking exercises that highlight important phenomena and provide an engaging firsthand view of the everyday relevance of research in cognition. Highlights: The book has three main threads that serve as unifying themes for current research in the field: Cognition and Neuroscience; Cognition and Consciousness; and Cognition and Individual Differences. A "story" introduces the book and is continually referred to throughout in installments, highlighting the application of the information and providing a useful organizing tool. A separate chapter on research methods presents an overview of experiments and data analysis, presented within the context of cognition research. Includes unique chapters on autobiographical memory and memory distortion. Also available from this author team: Readings in Cognitive Psychology (ISBN: 0-205-35867-5) This research reader helps provide an understanding of the fundamental concepts that have helped define the field of cognitive psychology. It is interesting, applicable, and extremely relevant to the cognitive psychology course and our lives. Article topics include the distinction between top-down and bottom-up processing, divided attention, proactive interference, and language learnability.