Customer Reviews

Cognitive Psychology

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John P. Anderson's latest edition of Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications is unfortunately lagging behind the field. Although I personally appreciated the shift away from a solely classical information-processing approach (i.e. humans as computers model) to include cognitive neuroscience, his survey of the field of cognitive psychology fails to take into account recent contributions from dynamical systems theory. Despite Anderson's explicit statement that "in some cases, considerable information processing takes place outside the brain" (p. 13), no reference is made to a nonlinear dynamical systems approach of cognitive psychology and only little is said on the similarly-related embodied perspective (p.129-130). The environmental situatedness of human cognition appears to be an afterthought in Anderson's review of the field; he finally gives a limited and elementary account of the Empiricist-Nativist debate in his last chapter on cognitive development. This is the extent of his discussion on the interactions between cognitive developmental processes and environmental, social, and cultural factors.

In addition, given that Anderson specifically proposes to address the implications of cognitive psychology in his title and the initial chapter, I was disappointed that the "Practical Implications" sections were used so sparingly, appearing only once every chapter or two. However, these small sections were well written, interesting, and enlightening. These and other examples used throughout the book were helpful in allowing me to interact with the material and attempt to apply the information to clinical practice. For example, the research provided by Anderson on flashbulb memories, or "particularly good memory" for important events, suggests that there is better retention of information when learned in a state of high arousal. This may have implications for why traumatic flashbacks are so vivid and difficult to forget. Psychoeducation is a common therapeutic technique used during the initial stages of treatment with trauma victims in which clients are provided with such information as the nature of their symptoms, course of treatment, prognosis, etc. Helping clients understand and expect traumatic memory recurrences may offer a source of control and empowerment over these flashbacks.

Although this textbook is not a difficult read, I am concerned that it seems too cursory a review for the advanced student of psychology and yet, too technically-detailed for beginners without a background in neuroanatomy. The textbook format perhaps makes this book best suited as an outline guide with more information to be supplemented by a professor and/or other readings rather than as a standalone book on the field of cognitive psychology. Finally, the appalling prevalence of typos in this book was terribly distracting.

After slogging through many dense readings and highly theoretical books for grad school, Anderson's Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications is a refreshing change of pace in its layout, presentation, and ease of comprehension, if not topic. It's a textbook about cognitive psychology and appears to be aimed toward an undergraduate population. Anderson appears to want to give an overview of the important areas of cognitive psychology and its relevant research and evolution through the years (and first six editions of the text) and does so in this survey book.

I must admit, one of the main things I appreciated about this book was the layout. Like a traditional textbook, it has wide margins, color, helpful illustrations and tables, bolded vocabulary words, and clear headings. The book not only made the topic of each section clear, but also included a bulleted take home point that was separately bracketed at the end of each section in case I missed the point. The tables and visual aids were helpful in assisting in understanding if the concept was particularly hard to grasp right away and the occasional "Implications" box discussed real-world examples and usages of the concepts. The text is easy to read and breaks down the ideas in an organized way to assist in comprehension. However, due to the manner in which the topics are approached and discussed, it may be deigned too simplistic for an advanced cognition course or for researchers or clinicians already in the field of neuropsychology and cognitive psychology.

The book covers topics such as mental imagery, perception, attention, judgment, decision making, and language. As Anderson states, "the basic mechanisms governing human thought are important in understanding the types of behavior studied by other social science" (p. 3), which includes clinical psychology, social psychology, political science, sociology, linguistics, and economics. It is important as clinicians to understand the research and theoretical pinnings of cognitive psychology to inform our practice and ensure that what we do in the therapy room is appropriate and helpful to the client. The concepts that the book covers is relevant to clinicians who are learning about the basic tenants of cognitive psych to increase their skills in diagnosing, conceptualizing, and treating their clients. Understanding conceptual knowledge and schemas can help a clinician explore how a client internalizes certain events or memories that may be affecting their outlook on life or their problematic behaviors. Learning about memory may help a clinician tailor interventions for a client who has trouble remembering what is learned in sessions or has trouble accessing certain memories. Problem solving and decision making are two skills important to anyone's everyday life and understanding the underlying processes and theories behind them may be helpful in assisting a client increase these skills. However, Anderson did not include how these processes may differ in other cultures. I would have like to explore how culture plays a role in language acquisition (has anyone done studies about English-speaking children abroad who are acquiring other languages?), memory, learning, and cognitive development. Anderson discussed Piaget's theory of development, but as Piaget mainly based this theory on males, it would have been interesting to see if there were not only cultural differences, but gender differences in Piaget's theory. I appreciated Anderson noting that immigrants often fare poorly on standardized IQ tests due to cultural biases and that "the very concept of intelligence is culturally relative" (p. 410). However, I did wish there was more information regarding how intelligence may be assessed in a culturally-respectful manner and what culturally- appropriate assessments are available.

Overall, this book is a good survey textbook for undergraduate cognition classes or clinicians who need a basic background in cognitive psychology. It has good examples, relevant issues and implications, and is easy to read. For those who already have a basic foundation in cognitive psychology, this book may be a bit simplistic and redundant.

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.

In the midst of endless books we are asked to buy and read as graduate students, it seems like a rarity to actually enjoy the books we read. Gone are the days when I could snuggle up with a book that I actually chose for myself so it is a pleasant surprise when an assigned text turns out to be a good one. This was the case with Anderson's Cognitive Psychology and its Implications. Not only did he fill the pages with practical applications, but he also gave useful explanations and visual aids to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the material. Ultimately, Anderson purports that cognitive science is the foundation upon which all other social sciences stand, even though many fields neglect to address many of the cognitive implications that may be present. I appreciated his call to the integration of a working knowledge of cognition with any conceptualization of human behavior, thought and emotion.

As previously noted, this book is useful in part because of the way it is written. Anderson was extremely clear in his explanations of concepts and gave an abundance of practical application. Further, he covered a broad range of topics. Most importantly, his book was really easy to read with accessible discussions and useful terminology. Overall, his passion for this subject really came through which made it easy for the reader to become interested too.

In reading this text, my interest in neuroscience and its implications for neuropsychological testing was piqued. Anderson touches on various assessments that can be used to test memory, attention and perception and thoughtfully integrated cognition with neuropsychological interpretation of these tests. For example, he used the stroop test to illustrate the experience and effects of competing forms of attention. In this section, he was discussing the challenges involved in overlapping tasks and responding to multiple cues. This begs the question; when we can only attend to so much at a time, how do we select what we attend to? His discussion of attention led me to think about the experience of patients with anxiety or depression. People with these disorders often find it more difficult to concentrate, possibly because there are compulsive worries or self defeating thoughts that are competing for their attention. Anderson's exploration of attention gave me food for thought regarding the cognitive implications for neuropsych testing as well as treatment within the mental health field.

Although I'm still waiting for the day that J.K. Rowling writes a compendium of neurocognitive theories, Anderson's book is a good alternative for an interesting and informative read.

I purchased Anderson's Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications for my Cognition class last month. At the beginning of the course, I was struggling with one of the required reading and spending a lot of energy and time tried to understand cognitive psychology. Therefore, when it comes to the time that I have to read this book, I was reluctant to begin reading it. However, when I started my reading, I was surprised that this book is an easy read for me, a non-native English speaker.

One thing I have to point out about this book is its layout. Like other text books, this book includes many pictures, tables, and illustrations to help readers to better understand how human brain works and where the working area located in our brain. This book not only has clear heading of each different topic but Anderson also includes a short summary and take home points at the end of each section for readers. Plus, Anderson tries to make this text book practical by including the "Implication" box in the book chapters. The "Implication" box talks about the real-world example and how to apply the concept for that chapter or how to use the concept to understand human beings. Anderson also includes some questions for readers to think about. To be honest, after reading this book, I started to appreciate the layout of text books.

In this book, Anderson covers many different topics include visual perception, attention, memory, problem solving, reasoning, judgment, decision making, and so on. I like how Anderson tries to make this difficult concept fits into our daily life and apply this concept in some real situations that we will encounter every day. For example, in chapter one, Anderson mentions the implications to other fields, such as economics field. Anderson also includes the practical applications in this chapter. He indicates that "if we really understood how people acquire knowledge and intellectual skills and how they perform feats of intelligence, then we would be able to improve their intellectual training and performance accordingly." (p.3) Personally, I think this gives readers (at least myself) a very good example that cognitive psychology is not just an abstract science for psychologists or psychiatrists, but an interesting concept for everyone. I think Anderson does a great job on breaking down this difficult and abstract concept into small practical topics. He also applies the concept on the book layout and includes the take home points at the end of each section to help readers to learn. I really appreciate his effort and enjoy reading his work.

However, as a graduate psychology student, I think Anderson needs to include more recent researches studies in the book. When reading this book, I found that there are many old researches and studies that I had already read 6 or 7 years ago when I was taking cognitive psychology in undergrad. I would like to see more new studies in the book to gain some new knowledge in this field.

Overall, this is a helpful book for me to understand this hard concept as well as to gain some information on how to apply it in practical setting.

The primary goal of this text is to breakdown human mental processes into the various components that comprise the whole that is consciousness. Anderson relies heavily on previous research, but he makes a concerted effort to present the information in a manner that is understandable to professionals and lay people alike. I found Anderson's work to be quite accessible considering the inherent breadth of cognitive psychology. I was required to read this text as part of graduate psychology program. I have always had a passing interest in cognitive psychology but found many texts to be pretty dry and grueling to comprehend. I was quite surprised at how painless Anderson's writing was. Anderson skips the fine details and pretention in favor of broad-brush strokes that will help the reader develop a basic understanding of higher mental processes like perception, memory, and language. He includes charts, pictures, key words, bullet points, and real-life applications in order to appeal to various learning styles. I personally enjoyed the numerous real-life examples including different studying styles.

As a clinical psychologist in training, I naturally applied what I read in the text to both psychological disorders and treatments (my way of creating meaning). I am amazed and somewhat humbled by the role cognitive factors play in the development, maintenance, and treatment of psychological disorders. Many common disorders treated by therapists are rooted in some cognitive function.
For example, Anderson's treatment of conceptual knowledge delves into schemas, or our mind's natural way of efficiently categorizing and deriving meaning from experiences. Common therapeutic techniques designed to treat depression and anxiety focus on these automatic categorizations of experience since they may no longer be adaptive to a person. Anderson's two chapters dealing with memory are also highly applicable to mental health professionals. Many psychological disorders and controversies (false-memories) are rooted in the function of memory. These two chapters were provided the science behind common psychological phenomenon related to memory functioning like trauma (flashbulb memories), specific phobias, repression, and amnesia. Anderson's chapter on Judgment and Decision Making has numerous implications for mental health professionals (and degenerate gamblers!) struggling with clients who continuously behave in a self-defeating manner. I especially enjoyed the implications section discussing why adolescents engage in risky behaviors.

Again, I am not that interested in neuropsychology but I do want to have a working scientific foundation to draw upon when working with clients. My only real qualm with this text is that Anderson does not taylor this work to psychotherapists. The real-life examples he offers were helpful in understanding the concepts but relating them to what goes on in the therapy room is a task left solely to the reader. Despite this one complaint, I think Anderson's text helped me meet my goal of gaining a basic understanding of cognitive psychology. I will most likely hang on to this text as a future reference tool.

If you're looking for something with a little more substance than "cognitive psychology for dummies," then Anderson's book is your best bet. Cognitive Psychology and its Implications is a textbook style read that holds true to it's title. It's organized with 14 chapters covering the foundations of cognitive science.

I appreciate that this book begins by explaining what cognitive science is, because the topic is dense by nature. Many books on the topic use the topic of mind and body to open up discussion on the cognitive science/psychology, which can get pretty heavy. In contrast, Anderson's book opens up by giving a dimple definition of cognitive psychology, saying, "Cognitive psychology is the science of how the mind id organized to produce intelligent thought and how it is realized in the brain." I love this! It's simple and to the point, and you don't have to try and guess what cognitive psychology is by digging through theory.

Another helpful feature of the book, is that each chapter begins with an outline on what will be covered. This structure proved to be very helpful when the material becomes more difficult to understand (i.e. probabilistic judgment in chapter 2), and one finds themselves wanting to skim certain concepts. Anderson provides many visual examples to support his writing, and bold the font of relevant terms. This was helpful when I quickly wanted a definition of a particular word. Anderson also cites alot of research when explaining etiology of concepts. As a graduate student who enjoys this topic, I like that Anderson does this, because it makes it easy for me to look up references if I want to know more about something he mentions. In conjunction with citations that support his writing's, he describes opposing research that highlights different aspects of the information he presents. This is informative when considering clinical importance. Speaking of which, some of the chapters have an "implications" section that explains how the concepts and theories are clinically applicable. Being in a clinical psychology program, I find this very helpful; one doesn't have to fully understand the concepts to see how they're applicable. Anderson does such a great job giving lots of examples, with pictures and diagrams. For example, in the chapter covering reasoning, Anderson presents pictures of brain structures that are activated when reasoning occurs. He follows up a visual picture, with a syntactical example. Doing this ensures that readers understand ideas from multiple perspectives. Overall, an easy textbook read!

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"

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