Customer Reviews

Cognitive Science: An Introduction

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David Green is a lecturer at University College London, where I study. He recommends his textbook - and only his textbook - for his cognitive science undergraduate course. If you're actually being taught by him, then this book may have its advantages - he tends to teach a lot of his lectures straight out of it. If you're studying cognitive psychology in any other context, though, I'd advise that you avoid this book.

It's poorly conceived and shoddily put together, giving only limited coverage of a complex and significant field. Major themes are left out or underdeveloped, and frequently important theoretical standpoints are glossed over without reference to key works. Green tends to put forward only the side of an argument which he agrees with - frequently completely failing to mention the alternatives. This, combined with only minimal guidelines for further reading, make it almost impossible to use this book as a resource guiding further study.

Ironically, considering that one of Green's specialities is in the cognitive processes of language and communication, this book is so badly written as to be almost incomprehensible. The language used is awkward, strung with non sequiturs, and frustratingly littered with unexplained and undefined jargon.
This is aggravated by weak general presentation. The book is entirely black-and-white, with few diagrams, and those that are present tending to be cramped and confused. The attempts to cross-reference material within the text also fails miserably.

The one positive thing I can say about this textbook is that it's relatively cheap. However, it's also of very little use. I'd strongly urge you to consider the alternatives - for example, Eysenck & Keane's 'Cognitive Psychology: a student's handbook' (I've been using the 1995 3rd edition), which covers most of the same information (and quite a lot which Green's book ignores), in much more detail and in a far more readable style.

This is a good text for a course. Cognitive Science does have some intellectual unity, though it also includes work from a very large number of disciplines. This book manages to capture both some of the uniqueness of the discipline and its spread.