Peter J. Hills - Cognitive Psychology For Dummies

Cognitive Psychology For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester,www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2016

2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, West Sussex

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016930757

ISBN 978-1-119-95321-0 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-95390-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-95391-3 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

The fact that youre reading this book implies that you have an interest in cognitive psychology or youre studying it for a course. In either case, you probably think that you know what cognitive psychology is: the study of all mental abilities and processes about knowing. Clearly, the subject covers a huge range whose contents would barely fit into 50 books the size of this one with more being written every day!

We think that everybody should be interested in cognitive psychology, because its fascinating. We know that all aficionados say that (from bell ringers to beer-mat collectors), but cognitive psychology really is! By scientifically studying how people see, remember, know, speak and think, you can truly understand what being human means and what makes all humans special.

Cognitive Psychology For Dummies is designed as an introduction to the subject. We cover the historical perspective on cognitive psychology, but also draw on interesting, more recent work.

We adopt an informal writing style, but one that remains technically appropriate and scientifically accurate. We write in plain English (which is tricky, because cognitive psychologists love jargon!). Where we do use technical language you can assume that its the only way to express something, but overall we make the tone as friendly as possible. We even include some jokes (if you dont spot any, its because were not very funny!). At no point are we making fun of anyone (except ourselves).

We endeavour to relate everything in this book to everyday reality, using real-world examples to anchor the more technical information. Nevertheless, cognitive psychologists like to create highly controlled, laboratory-based experiments that, on the surface, bear little resemblance to the real world. Dont fear though; everything cognitive psychologists study has some benefit to humanity.

Most chapters also cover instances of when things go wrong. These discussions show how a particular cognitive ability can go haywire in healthy people (such as visual illusions) or those with brain damage.

This book is for people who need and want to know about cognitive psychology. For the former, we present all the information covered in school and the first year of a university course (anywhere in the world) in a highly accessible way. We map the content onto the most common courses of cognitive psychology. If you simply want to know about cognitive psychology, we present some of the most interesting and fun psychology here too. We pack the book with examples and exercises you can try out and demonstrate on your friends and family to amaze them!

We use conventions to help you find your way around this book easily:

• Italic text highlights new, often specialist, terms that we always define nearby. These include elements of jargon we just cant escape, though we also use italics for emphasis.
• Boldfaced text indicates part of a list or numbered steps.

Unlike most textbooks in psychology, we dont include references or in-text citations. We mention the name of a researcher when we feel that the persons work is important and worth remembering.

We sometimes describe a few of the most important and influential studies, but not always. Be assured, however, that all the results and effects we describe in this book are based on empirical research we simply dont want to get bogged down in such detail too often.

We also provide a number of sidebars, containing additional information with more detailed theories, methodologies or clinical examples. You can skip over these without missing anything essential, but we think theyre interesting and add a lot to the text.

Hundreds of books on cognitive psychology exist. Many are technical, long, dry, specialised or cover a very narrow area of cognition. We wrote