Customer Reviews

Cognition: The Thinking Animal, Second Edition

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Before selecting a textbook for my cognitive psychology course, I read sections of many of the textbooks available. The Willingham textbook was by far the most readable and engaging. The students' evaluations confirmed my opinion; the vast majority loved the book. I had the same result in two different semester with about 100 students per semester. I'm using the second edition next semester.

I used the Willingham text for my cognition course. At first I was delighted to find an author who attempted to frame the content of cognitive psychology as simple questions, devoid of jargon, the importance of which could be easily grasped by students. As the semester went on however, I found that the students found the text tedious and confusing. I feel that this was due to the lack of explicitly connecting the specific concepts back to the general theme of the chapter. Furthermore, his descriptions of certain experiments were outright confusing and ambiguously described, even to me. I think the approach is admirable- but the goal hasnt been reached yet. I look forward to the next edition, and hope I can once again use the text.

If you actually have interest in the subject - this book is very easy to follow and understand. There are great 'real-life' examples for everything and questions (with answers in the back) at the end of every section so you can test yourself. The writing style is pretty casual (which is what separates it from many other books on the topic) and I also noticed a few minor spelling and grammatical errors - but nothing that disrupts the reading or understanding, provided your reading level is at or above 5th grade.

Book was shipped the next day. Shippment arrived earlier than I had anticipated. Book was in excellent condition.

Thank you for sending my book so quickly! So helpful for as a student needing to start reading and homework. Book is in great condition as promised. I definitely recommend this seller for any prospective buyer.

This book is very handy to have because it goes into detail about the subject that is being studied. It illustrates examples which are very good and when seeing the example you could grasp the concept more of what the subject it about.

Most psychology text books I've had to read have been a pain, but I found this one pretty easy to read and understand. (I think maybe the guys from UVA with the prof. that wrote this book must have a personal agenda...) But, that's just my opinion. Not that most of us have a choice in reading text books...

I wanted to learn about this subject and took the class from the author of the book at UVa. He's a pretty good professor but a terrible author of books. there are many usuage/grammatical mistakes in the book and its extremely hard to read. Doesnt make much sense and is highly not recommended.

I take this professor at UVa, good guy, good professor but the book is poorly written. A pain to read and doesnt make much sense, Poor english is used. Dont buy this book