Product Description
The authors' proposal of a new model of psychological organization that integrates psychoanalytic theory with the investigation of mental processes. Based in cognitive science. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Basic Outline of Bucci's Theories
As noted by other reviewers, Bucci's theories are complex and a background in the history of academic and clinical psychology, as well as psychoanalysis, are helpful to appreciate them.Also as noted by another reviewer much research has been done using Bucci & Maskit's computerized discourse measures of The Referential Process since this book was published 13 years ago.More recent work has demonstrated the validity of these measures against Bucci's definitions in empirical studies as well as validating these measures against measures of temporal sequences in narratives and measures of episodic memory.Some of this work is outlined at the Web site below along with summaries of Bucci's main theoretical ideas:

[...]

Though Bucci's ideas and research have developed since this book was first published it remains the single most comprehensive source that outlines her arguments in the context of the history of these diverse fields.

A Thoughtful Integration
Dr. Bucci's book is a thoughtful integration of Cognitive Science and psychoanalytic thinking. The book is obviously for those who are in the field or are students of the field. She explains basic concepts in Cognitive Science and psychoanalysis in a lucid manner. She is a creative thinker who attempts to cast off what cannot stand up well in light of current science but shows how much of psychoanalysis can stand up better than many critics think. The chapters on her research were not as strong as the theoretical chapters, as she was not clear on what her complex coding system should expect to see in various situations. She has done much more research since the book was published and interested readers would do well to follow up this book with her research articles.

A low RA book
Bucci writes a great deal about what she calls Referential Activity, the ability to put experience into symbols and words in a specific and concrete way.But the book itself shows little RA, with page upon page of densely jargon-backed theoretical discussion, and almost no concrete examples of the highly abstract and difficult concepts presented.This makes it almost impossible to understand much what Bucci is saying without an extensive background in both cognitive science and psychoanalytic theory, a background few share.Morever, Bucci seems to take her integration too far, combinbing the work of cognitive science authors and perspectives that are strikingly incompatible without really dealing with this incompatibility.Cognitive science, like psychoanalytic theory, is a pluralistic, even anarchistic group of heterogenous voices, hardly the kind of unified front that Bucci often seems to want it to be. ... Read more

Product Description
Three leading figures in the field of cognitiveneuroscience provide an engaging, narrativedriven overview of this path-breaking field.Taking a highly interdisciplinary approach, theauthors balance cognitive theory, withneuroscientific and neuropsychological evidenceto reveal what we currently know about how thehuman mind works and to encourage students tothink like cognitive neuroscientists. The texthas been reorganized to move more seamlesslyfrom micro to macro level topics, and itsunderlying pedagogy strengthened in order tomake it an even more effective teaching tool.Maintaining its commitment to highlight the most cutting-edge trends in the field, the thirdedition includes the first ever standalonechapter of its kind on social neuroscience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Good book.
This is a nice book, written in a language that suits readers with a general scientific background. Richly illustrated with many colorful pictures and diagrams.A good introduction to the subject.

Worst textbook of my life
The goal of any good textbook, for the purposes of the layman who is unfamiliar in the field, should be to present the ideas in a clear and fluid manner, without becoming too wordy or cryptic.
This book does anything but that.

The book is incredibly dense, arcane, and unnecessarily verbose. Trying to read and understand the material is like trying to dissect a frozen, rotting carcass of a bull with a butter knife: it is arduous, squalid, and of course, without utility. It simply never gives. There were times that I would labor through a confusing paragraph, barely managing to get through without getting lost in the words, and by the time I was done, I would step back and feel completely clueless as to what I had just read. Then, after scanning the rest of the chapter and discovering that the torture went on for another 50 pages, I wanted to die. And it wasn't long--maybe about an hour and 3 pages later--that I realized I was, indeed, dying.

I love psychology, and I find neurophysiology fascinating, but I hate this textbook. Since I had to rely on it for my test, this textbook is the sole reason I suffered this semester. Having never taken a psychology course that wasn't satisfying, I was surprised that this could ever happen to me. But it did. And it sucked. It sucked like hell.

Call this review extreme, but I haven't talked to another student in my class that *doesn't* agree with me in this opinion, at least to some degree.

Tell your professors to never make their students read this book. And if your professor insists, drop the course as soon as possible, and make it out alive while you can.

I'm not even kidding.

Excellent book
This is a very good textbook that describes the field, which I haven't seen a definition for, but basically seems to be the connection between our biology and human thought, memory, speech and so on.The book is a full introduction and requires no specialized knowledge.

Neuroscience is probably the most interesting scientific field right now.Even the simplest thought processes of tiny things like worms are not yet understood but the recent giant leap in medical technology is allowing scientists to study smaller and smaller pieces of the puzzle. There are new discoveries coming out every year such as 'mirror neurons' and there will be a lot of big breakthroughs and nobel prizes here in the future.I'm especially interested in how this affects computer science, there a lot of billionaires out there plowing money into research such as at the Redwood Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience and Microsoft Research.

An excellent narrative-style textbook
I would recommend this textbook to anyone who is interested in learning cognitive neuroscience. This textbook was recommended to me by a professor at Harvard, Dr. Andrea Heberlein. Since this course is not taught at my university, I decided to cover it on my own. And, by far, this is the best textbook I've ever had. Here are the reasons why:

1) Gazzaniga along with his colleagues is the legend of cognitive psychology, so I was happy to see that the research is up-to-date featuring the frontiers of cognitive neuroscience. My understanding of scientific articles on the topics I covered improved enormously.

2) The explanations are very clear and narrative-style. That means that the author includes the stories of origination of different ideas within neuroscience, competition between different researchers in a psychological debate, descriptions of where the researchers come from (the feature that I really liked and that no other textbook has), extended examples on the subjects. This is the first textbook I read like a novel.

3) Enormous amount of excellent illustrations. This is the best illustrated book that I have seen - and I have seen many. The illustrations are very clear and colorful. They include all the aspects that are needed to support the text.

4) The textbook covers most of the material that can be covered by some textbooks on biopsychology when it comes to cognitive functions. However, it advances well beyond this level. There are separate chapters on attentions, on hemisphericality, etc. However, since the book contains almost everything you need to know, you don't even have to take biopsych in advance. In fact, it describes synapse in more detail than in both of my biopsych textbooks. Besides, the explanations in the textbook are so clear that even if you did, you will enjoy revisiting the past topics from a new perspective.

5) The book provides a perfect amount of both cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology. The authors assume that you have already taken cognitive psychology course. However, they still provide just the right amount of information on it, to refresh your memory, I guess, to proceed with the relevance to the brain.

6) The cover picture of the brain makes you want to open the textbook and read.

As for the price - I wish I would buy this textbook earlier not to waste my money on anything else. This is the best investment I made.

The Best I've Seen So Far
This book is thorough and comprehensive.It covers the basics that one needs to know to be familiar with the field as well as more in depth matters.The writing style is informal and a pleasure to read.I would highly recommend this book to students, teachers or experts in the field.Or for people like me who are interested laypersons. ... Read more

Product Description
While philosophers of mind have been arguing over the status of mental representations in cognitive science, cognitive scientists have been quietly engaged in studying perception, action, and cognition without explaining them in terms of mental representation. In this book, Anthony Chemero describes this nonrepresentational approach (which he terms radical embodied cognitive science), puts it in historical and conceptual context, and applies it to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind.

Radical embodied cognitive science is a direct descendant of the American naturalist psychology of William James and John Dewey, and it follows them in viewing perception and cognition to be understandable only in terms of action in the environment. Chemero argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation. After outlining this orientation to cognition, Chemero proposes a methodology: dynamical systems theory, which would explain things dynamically and without reference to representation. He also advances a background theory: Gibsonian ecological psychology, "shored up" and clarified. Chemero then looks at some traditional philosophical problems (reductionism, epistemological skepticism, metaphysical realism, consciousness) through the lens of radical embodied cognitive science and concludes that the comparative ease with which it resolves these problems, combined with its empirical promise, makes this approach to cognitive science a rewarding one.

"Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher," Chemero writes in his preface, adding, "I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything." With this book, Chemero explains nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological cognitive science as clearly and as rigorously as Jerry Fodor explained computational cognitive science in his classic work The Language of Thought.

A Bradford Book ... Read more

Product Description
This landmark text introduces the novice reader to what great thinkers think about thought. Unlike most texts, authors Jay Friedenberg and Gordon Silverman use a theoretical, rather than empirical, approach to examine the most important theories of mind from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. While experiments are discussed, they are used primarily to illustrate the specific characteristics of a model.

Customer Reviews (4)

Great introductory book for an extremely interdisciplinary field
For the amount of material it covers, this is a great book. I read it cover to cover and I've kept even after finishing my intro to Cognitive Science course because it is straightforward and covers all of the basics of modern cognitive science. There is much more breadth to it than Thagard's book Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science, and Gazzaniga's Methods in Mind (although those are great books, they're more specific and more suited for upper level classes or as a supplement ot this book). I don't think the one star reviews are valid assessments; my major is Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (it's a single interdisciplinary major at my school)and coming from a program with a heavier emphasis on philosophy than most cognitive science and psychology majors, I think it's unfair to demand that an introductory book like this delve too deeply into that aspect of the material. This gives a cursory explanation of the philosophical debates going on, but ultimately there's way too much going on in philosophy of the mind to be adequately introduced in a book that's also supposed to be giving an overview of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. To be fair, the text can get repetitive because the structure is the same througout the book, but that didn't keep me from reading it when I was taking the class. As a plus, the publisher's website offers some flashcards and review questions for each chapter which really helped me study for exams. If I were a cognitive science professor I'd use this for my intro class over Thagard's or Gazzaniga's.

Excuse my language, but this book sucks
I totally agree with the previous negative review, so I'll just add my own disappointments here. I am currently taking a cognitive science course, and this is the textbook we're using. It's new this year, and I have a hunch it won't be on the menu for next semester.

It seems like at least a third of the text in this book is dedicated to sentences like this:"We have just now read [topic A], which was [description of topic A], and next we will cover topic B, and after that we'll cover topic C."This fluff/dust makes the book hard to read, and there is very little "meat" in between.

Here's an actual quote that made me laugh out loud this morning:(page 167)
"Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT).This technique was first developed in the 1970s. [short explanation of what it is, then new paragraph: ] Positron Emission Tomography (PET). This imaging proceedure (developed in the 1980s) was developed later than computerized axial tomography." Well, how about that,they even attempt to teach me about time:the 1980s came after the 1970s!!

Don't buy this book.

Comprehensive and Useful
I read "Cognitive Science An Introduction to the Study of Mind" not for a course requirement, but because I was interested in the topic. The book provided a comprehensive and readable account of this new field. It explained ideas in a way that I could follow, not having had any specialized training in the different areas. The figures effectively broke up the text and helped to explain and expand upon concepts introduced in the chapters. The exercises and web links at the chapter endings invite to reiterate and explore topics in greater detail. There was also a web site with practice exams and electronic flash cards. I can see that it would be useful for an undergraduate if assigned for a course.

DO NOT USE THIS TEXTBOOK
What a horrible book. If you are a professor looking for a textbook for an interdisciplinary cognitive science class, absolutely DO NOT use this one. If you want to learn anything about the subject, DO NOT buy it. This horrible excuse for a textbook was written by a couple of psychologists who obviously don't know the first thing about philosophy, AI, computer science, or any of the other topics they attempt to address. An inordinately large amount of text is devoted to a complete history of psychology, while philosophical issues crucial to the field are given the short shrift.

Not only is the material in the book of reprehensible quality, it is presented in an embarrassingly slipshod manner. I can't imagine how a publisher could print this book and still respect themselves. The illustrations from the book consist of clip art and worse, and consistently look pixelly and distorted. As if it weren't bad enough that the material is second-rate, it's cheaply presented with useless and confusing diagrams and tables.

All in all, my undergraduate class could have put together a better text. Throughout the course we were consistently correcting and refuting the text. Our professor only ordered it for the class because he had not read it. This book is a waste of time, money, trees, effort, and space. Avoid it at all costs. ... Read more

Product Description
The essays in this anthology deal with the growing interconnections between moral philosophy and research that draws upon neuroscience, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology. This cross- disciplinary interchange coincides, not accidentally, with the renewed interest in ethical naturalism. In order to understand the nature and limits of moral reasoning, many new ethical naturalists look to cognitive science for an account of how people actually reason. At the same time, many cognitive scientists have become increasingly interested in moral reasoning as a complex form of human cognition that challenges their theoretical models. The result of this collaborative, and often critical, interchange is an exciting intellectual ferment at the frontiers of research into human mentality.Sections and Contributors:Ethics NaturalizedOwen Flanagan, Mark L. Johnson, Virginia HeldMoral Judgments, Representations, and PrototypesPaul M. Churchland, Andy Clark, Peggy DesAutels, Ruth Garrett MillikanMoral EmotionsRobert M. Gordon, Alvin I. Goldman, John Deigh, Naomi SchemanAgency and ResponsibilityJames P. Sterba, Susan Khin-Zaw, Helen E. Longino, Michael E. BratmanA Bradford Book ... Read more

Product Description
Psychological treatments have proved very effective in treating a wide spectrum of psychiatric syndromes, including depression, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, bulimia nervosa, hypochondriasis, chronic fatiguesyndrome, premenstrual syndrome and social phobia. The Science and Practice of Cognitive Behavior Therapy reviews the current literature and provides a useful examination of the science and practice within cognitive behaviour therapy. Both David Clark and Christopher Fairburn are acknowledged experts in the field and have succeeded in bringing together some of the world's foremost authorities in psychiatry. Topics covered include: the scientific foundations of cognitive behaviour therapy, efficacy and dissemination of psychological treatments, panic disorders and social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sex therapy, and attempted suicide. ... Read more

Product Description
The first full-scale introduction to and history of cognitive science. An interdisciplinary study of the nature of knowledge by the noted cognitive scientist and author of Frames of Mind. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A HELPFUL HISTORY (ALBEIT AS OF 1985) OF COGNITIVE SCIENCES
Howard Gardner (born 1943) is an American developmental psychologist and Professor of Cognition at Harvard University.

He states in the Preface to this 1985 book, "I decided that it would be useful and rewarding to undertake a study in which I would rely heavily on the testimony of those scholars who had founded the field as well as those who were at present its most active workers. But in lieu of an oral history or a journalistic account of current laboratory work ... I decided to make a comprehensive investigation of cognitive science in which I could include the long view---the philosophical origins, the histories of each of the respective fields, the current work that appears most central, and my own assessment of the prospects for this ambitious field."He then adds in an Epilogue to the paperback edition of the book, "the research program described in 'The Mind's New Science' is being actively pursued on many fronts: a substantially changed second edition could be written, describing advances in our understanding of visual perception, natural language processing, imaging, categorization, and human rationality."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"Having no insight about the subject matter of a problem, the computer is consigned to make blunders that, in human beings, would never happen or would be considered extremely stupid."
"Here we are, two thousand years after the first discussions about perception, several hundred years after the philosophical debates between the empiricists and the rationalists first raged, and leading scientists are still disagreeing about fundamentals."
"I find it distorted to conceive of human beings apart from their membership in a species that has evolved over the millenia, and as other than organisms who themselves develop according to a complex interaction between genetic proclivities and environmental processes over a lifetime. To the extent that thought processes reflect these bio-developmental factors and are suffused with regressions, anticipations, frustrations, and ambivalent feelings, they will differ in fundamental ways from those exhibited by a nonorganic system."

Good historical background, but ferociously obsolete
IF you want a REALLY good cognitive science primer don't buy this book.

Best Cognitive Science Primer --> MIND: Introduction to Cognitive Science, 3rd Edition, By Paul Thagard, ISBN(13): 978-0-262-70109-9 , The MIT Press. See my review at amazon.com

This book, "The Mind's New Science", provides good historical perspective on cognitive science before 1985. "MIND" does so in less detail. The text was written while the information revolution was in it's infancy and it shows.The chapters on mental representations are archaic but provide an excellant opportunity to see the evolution of the science as well as author's quite understandable student-of-psychology bias.The author is a well-respected academic from Cambridge, MA.But this is an "inside cognitive science book written by an "insider".

The author knows too much about cognitive science and forgets to share that knowledge with the reader.It is a very well done essay or report for "those in the know" - for the rest of us??

As a learning tool this is an unremarkable text.The author's style is obtuse and reminscent of early 19th century philosophers.The flow of prose is stilted by rigorous adherence to grammar and terminology.The author fails to fully define concepts inherently referenced. My most freqent experience was bewilderment at the end of each paragraph.By careful dissection of each sentence I could MOSTLY figure out what information I needed to have - and did not -in order to UNDERSTAND what he just said.

My personal assessment----> The text is not a textbook designed for students, the goal of this book is NOT to illuminate the realm of inquiry into human cognition.The book is a very long persuasive essay whose thesis statement is: "The maturation of cognitive science DOES NOT eliminate the NEED for philosophy as a specific discipline".

***THE END*** :)

Decent supplement to broader study, but too biased by itself
The book is a history of ideas. This breaks down into some light historical content, and much presentation of positions (sometimes with a little supporting argument).

As a history, I would compare this book to what you might expect from an account of the Cuban revolution written by a relatively conscientious Castro partisan: sensitive reports of leaders' statements, factual aspects painted in slightly punched-up colors with a vague and gentle brush, heroics and ideology emphasized. Naturally, you can expect a wildly inaccurate and polemic treatment of 'life before the revolution.'

As a presentation of ideas, its main virtue is its fidelity. Gardner has taken up the opinions of a handful of big-name cognitivists and represented them here. You could tell who was saying what without any citations, just from what is written. As such, it would be undoubtedly useful for reviewing just what claims people liked to make during the revolution, not too unlike having a set of extracts from classic guerilla texts.

The claims themselves are a parade of ad hominem attacks, conclusive strikes on straw men, vast overstatements, and unbelievable exclusions (e.g., cognitive psychology can't even peripherally be bothered with: emotion, cultural or social factors, or the state of the environment at any point). There is no use in adopting these viewpoints, nor in arguing against them. They are out of touch. Gardner himself has a few interesting things to say about psychology getting involved with epistemological issues, but here they don't amount to more than an appetizer. Too bad, since I thought these were pretty interesting and much more substantive than what Gardner was reporting on.

Given the above, I would only recommend the book as supplementary material in a broader look at the history of psychology, or in order to satisfy very casual interests in the history of cognitivist ideas. You should not bother with this book if you want an introduction to or a clearer understanding of cognitivism, nor if you want support for or ammunition against cognitive work as it is practiced. If these are your goals, you should instead get in contact with research, whether by text or by directly checking out articles.

Impressive.
This is a very readable, very complete introduction/history to the thinking, questions and issues underlying cognitive science from its philosophical origins. It pulls many threads together to give a cohesiveand complementary account of the development of the fields involved incognitive science in a way that garners a strong feel for the field forthose new to it, and that will grant new insights to those well acquaintedwith the field.

Damn impressive, all told. ... Read more

Product Description
Written by a stellar group of internationally renowned scholars, this work gathers thirteen new essays on key topics in the lively, interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. Philosophers, psychologists, and neurologists come together to investigate such fascinating subjects as the neural basis of language, cognition, and emotion; consciousness; vision; rationality; artificial life; and the relations between mind and world--our representation of numbers and space, for instance. For anyone who has ever been fascinated by the exploration of the human mind, this book is a must. ... Read more

Product Description
Unmatched in the quality of its world-renowned contributors, this multidisciplinary Companion serves as both a course text and a reference book across the broad spectrum of issues of concern to cognitive science. Cognitive science is one of the most exciting intellectual and scientific developments of the second half of the 20th century, integrating insights from psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, philosophy, and other disciplines in an attempt to understand human cognition. It is also a rapidly transforming domain of inquiry. This Companion presents everything one needs to know about cognitive science, what it has accomplished, and where it will be going at the start of the 21st century. Beginning with an introduction that maps the narrative history of cognitive science as a whole, the volume goes on to present sixty newly-commissioned essays that together provide an unparalleled survey of all the topical areas, major methods, and stances. There are explanatory overviews of key controversies, detailed discussions of the application of work in cognitive sciences to the real world, and anticipations of future developments. A Companion to Cognitive Science can be seen as the ultimate resource guide to this fast-moving field of study. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

For the postgraduate
I do agree with Nessander that it is pretty inaccessible for most laymen. However, I do like the concise but still fairly substantial papers in the rest of the companion, since I do know aspects of the field (cognitive science) well.

The book will mostly serve academics, or students at the postgraduate level who require a thorough introduction to specialised areas of cognitive science, but do not have the time to follow up on the literature. I presume that people who read it would have already had at least an undergraduate background in one of the fields covered (AI, psychology, economics etc.)

So while its audience base is limited, it still nonetheless serve a useful purpose to some readers like myself. It makes related topics accessible, without reducing it (the level of discussion that is) to the popular science level of discussion like articles in Scientific American etc. Also, it is not meant to be read from cover to cover.

A Massive Book on a Massive Subject
Cognitive Science is a large and relatively new field. Its subject is how the mind works, using the tools and methods of science. In its early days in the 50's and 60's it dealt primarily with discussions of artificial intelligence, and could safely said to have concerned itself with a host of issues that today seem rather boring and out-of-date. Yet in the past two decades it has experienced a flourishing, brought to the foreground especially by the writings of popular figures such as Steven Pinker of MIT on language and others on neural networks.

This volume is massive, but it has to cover a lot of ground, since cognitive science is now an interdisciplinary field with a vast array of topics. The volume starts with an introduction and historical overview of cognitive science, which takes up 100 pages. This is an interesting introduction.

Unfortunately the remaining portion of this large volume is unsuited for the beginner. The various areas of cognitive science are treated, each in a separate article. This includes AI, neuroscience, language models, and so on, each in a rather short piece (sometimes 7-8 pages) written by an expert on that subject (including figures such as Terrence Deacon, of 'The Symbolic Species', who has an article consisting mainly of rather perplexing diagrams).

The vast range of subjects and the articles' short length does not make for the best combination. What suffers is readability and usability. It is hard to imagine what purpose exactly this volume could serve. The uninitiated will find it almost impossible to jump into - for it is certainly not an introduction, and the articles presume a decent background in the subject matter - whereas the serious student of cognitive science will almost certainly want more meat to chew on in order to get the theories and findings of the respective scientists and fields presented. All this is complicated by the fact that these theories are for the most part very recent and constantly undergoing change, which means that this book could be out of date very shortly (although the earlier, more historical sections on AI and the early days of cognitive science will remain interesting).

In summary: an ambitious work, attractively laid out, but not terribly useful for most, I would imagine. ... Read more

Product Description
The interdisciplinary field of cognitive science brings together elements of cognitive psychology, mathematics, perception, and linguistics. Focusing on the main areas of exploration in this field today, Cognitive Science presents comprehensive overviews of research findings and discusses new cross-over areas of interest. Contributors represent the most senior and well-established names in the field. This volume serves as a high-level introduction, with sufficient breadth to be a graduate-level text, and enough depth to be a valued reference source to researchers. ... Read more

Product Description
An Invitation to Cognitive Science provides a point of entry into thevast realm of cognitive science, offering selected examples of issuesand theories from many of its subfields. All of the volumes in thesecond edition contain substantially revised and as well as entirely newchapters.

Rather than surveying theories and data in the manner characteristic ofmany introductory textbooks in the field, An Invitation to CognitiveScience employs a unique case study approach, presenting a focusedresearch topic in some depth and relying on suggested readings to conveythe breadth of views and results. Each chapter tells a coherentscientific story, whether developing themes and ideas or describing aparticular model and exploring its implications.

The volumes are self contained and can be used individually inupper-level undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from introductorypsychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and decision sciences, tosocial psychology, philosophy of mind, rationality, language, and visionscience.

CONTENTS

I · CONCEPTS AND REASONING Concepts and Categorization E.E. Smith Probability Judgment D. N. Osherson DecisionMaking E. Shafir and A. Tversky Continuity and Discontinuity inCognitive Development S. Carey Classifying Nature AcrossCultures S. Atran Rationality G. Harman II · PROBLEMSOLVING AND MEMORY Working Memory and Thinking J. JonidesProblem Solving K. Holyoak Deduction and Cognition L. RipsSocial Cognition: Information Accessibility and Use in SocialJudgment N. Schwartz The Mind as the Software of the Brain N.Block Daniel N. Osherson, general editor ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Condition from Seller
Once again, I am satisfied with the sellers on Amazon. I've been buying textbooks for school on Amazon and every time I am extremely satisfied with the products. This book came in great condition as if new and it came in the correct time frame proposed.

THinking
THis book is okay, however does not seem to incorporate many of the more important aspects of cognitive science. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
This book, a member of the Series in Affective Science, is a unique interdisciplinary sequence of articles on the cognitive neuroscience of emotion by some of the most well-known researchers in the area. It explores what is known about cognitive processes in emotion at the same time it reviews the processes and anatomical structures involved in emotion, determining whether there is something about emotion and its neural substrates that requires they be studied as a separate domain. Divided into four major focal points and presenting research that has been performed in the last decade, this book covers the process of emotion generation, the functions of amygdala, the conscious experience of emotion, and emotion regulation and dysregulation. Collectively, the chapters constitute a broad but selective survey of current knowledge about emotion and the brain, and they all address the close association between cognitive and emotional processes. By bringing together diverse strands of investigation with the aim of documenting current understanding of how emotion is instantiated in the brain, this book will be of use to scientists, researchers, and advanced students of psychology and neuroscience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A comprehensive, contemporary view on emotions. What neuroscience can teach us about emotional psychology!
Introduction:
Psychology is no longer a substantial mean by which emotion can be explained thus a new view on emotion based on neuroscience is necessary and substantiated by this book. Interestingly, select parts of famous emotional theories proposed by people such as Freud, Darwin, Pavlov, and Piaget have been found to have some validity; even more surprisingly has been the discovery of a neural basis for social phenomena such as sex differences in emotional processing and subliminal messaging. While there were a few times I felt like I had to stop reading because of information overload or boredom, I cannot think of a better book that describes the research and developments pertaining to the neuroscience of emotion. There probably have been a large amount of breakthroughs since the book was written in 2000, yet I believe this book still offers an intriguing and extensive review of this field.

Recommendation Audience:
This book is recommended for readers who are at least familiar with neuroscience though I recommended this book for readers who understand the fundamentals of neuroscience. The book is a volume of scholarly reviews and thus the complexity of the material and reading level of the chapters are appropriate for such literary works; however, individual chapters are so well written that readers who struggle a little with reading reviews will be pleased that the the authors convey their ideas in an easily understood manner. Unless you are already well versed in this field, reading the book a chapter at a time is recommended since the chapters are compact and contain tons of information.

Summary:
This is a non-spoiler summary of the book since the books contains so much detailed information it cannot be summarized in such a short manner.

The book is an extensive compilation of scholarly reviews on the neuroscience of emotion and related cognitive processes. Each chapter is separate review written by an influential author (or a few) in this field and the book is edited by an emotional researcher and psychiatrist and by a cognitive neuroscientist. The presented themes are defining emotion and its behavioral and/or physiological responses, the neuroanatomical basis of emotion as modeled using the amygdala, the role of consciousness in emotion, and the relevance and diversity of emotion of human neuroscience. Below I will briefly summarize each theme as presented in the same order as in the book.

Emotions, feelings, and moods are explicitly defined as separate states: emotions are a collection of responses to external or internal stimuli, whereas feelings are the conscious experience of emotion, and moods are frequently or even continuously occurring emotions. Emotions are about something and are built by determining the significance of that something, a process known as appraisal. Emotional appraisal occurs using two different routes (reinstatement of previous experience or computation) that are based on categorization (prototype or theory based) governed by reasoning (associative or rule based) and serve behavioral functions (preparedness or flexibility) that enhance the probability of survival. The general consensus for the purpose of emotion is as an adaptive survival tool. Moreover, emotions and their behavioral responses do not require conscious processing. Survival was dependent on speed and so processing of emotionally significant stimuli required fast processing which antecedes conscious processing. In higher order animal(especially humans) cognition plays a role in the behaviors and feelings that emotions produce.

Survival (in some higher animals) depends on social groups and avoiding dangerous situations. Facial expression and processing of other's faces are of particular importance for the first while fear is of particular importance for the later. Fear produces easily measurable physiological responses across animal species such as changes in heart rate, behavioral changes, sweat response, and activation of the amygdala (a well studied brain region) and thus is widely studied as a model for emotional processing. The amygdala plays an important role in conjunction with the hippocampus in encoding long-term emotional memories especially those dealing with fear; fear conditioning induces a long-term potentiation-like plasticity in the amygdala and enhances learning. Pavlovian conditioning cannot take place if either the hippocampus or amygdala are removed. The exact functions of the amygdala are not fully understood but additional functions probably include a role in stimulus-reward associations (determination of emotional significance of stimuli) and social hierarchy (dominance). Interestingly, "amygdala damage in monkeys produces a pronounced loss of affective behavior and a catastrophic breakdown in social interactions, comparable changes in humans...often appear unremarkable."

Much of cognitive neuroscience is focused on the production and purpose of consciousness. If, "Emotions evolved from simple reflexive actions...among the most primitive and general of these responses are movements towards positive, appetitive things and movements away from negative, unpleasant things," then what is the purpose of emotional consciousness since responses to emotionally significant stimuli can be carried out fully without awareness? The role of consciousness was studied using patients with blindsight or using subliminal masking techniques, and these studies do show that emotion is still processed regardless of consciousness. The purpose of awareness of emotions may be to delay behavioral responses where immediate action is not required and thereby allowing for more informed decisions to be made thus increasing the probability of survival. Furthermore, the purpose of awareness may be to facilitate communication of emotions to others using language; "cognitive development...consists of the transformation of knowledge from implicit (procedural, sensorimotor) to explicit conscious thought forms through the use of language...the way language is used to describe emotion modifies what one knows about emotion and how emotion is consciously experience." Theories on how emotional awareness is created include self-perception using visceral feedback that detect physiological changes (i.e. sympathetic afferents), facial feedback, and more modern theories concerning diencephalic theories , left-right social emotional theory, and modular theory. The book focuses on modular theory which divides emotions into 3 dimensions: valence (positive/negative), arousal, and motor activation and approach-avoidance. They postulate that emotional experience may depend on patterns of neural activation of this modular network; possible brain regions associated with awareness are the anterior cingulate cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the paralimbic cortex.

Dispersed throughout the book are numerous examples (physical and mental) of abnormal and normal patterns of emotion. Abnormal brain function and structure from congenital defects, lesioning, or traumatic injury have provided much of what we know about what brain regions are associated with what functions. Studies have provided information that have therapeutic relevance, and in some cases applications, for depression, anxiety disorders (including phobias), and specialized therapy for specific brain damaged regions. The data presented additionally provides insight into general social behaviors such as the neural basis of differences between emotional processing in men and women. "Females are more facially expressive, males are more reactive [to arousal] in the electrodermal system," "woman are more sensitive to emotional cues in themselves and others than men," and these difference are most likely due to disparities in activation of specific brain areas associated with the respective responses.

Opinion of the Book:
Overall this book was extremely informative and considering the amount of the information packed into each chapter this book is relatively short. The tactical use of figures, diagrams, and other pictures was essential to comprehension of the material and keeping that material interesting; additionally, I truly appreciated the fact that the pictures in the book were large enough to clearly see them and extract the full meaning of the information they conveyed. I generally conquer with the order of the chapters. I believe readers will appreciate the organization of each chapter. Methods, the parts that are the hardest to pay attention to, were easily identified and could be skipped without losing too much important information but were there for those interested in the scientific method. Lastly, I liked the fact that many of the key points were either briefly introduced in a short paragraph or listed out explicitly.

Translation of of scientific information to real-world application is important, and the authors and editors made sure they include applicable and relevant material; moreover, the editors did not forget about future directions of research. The book did not get lost in the localization of brain function and was open to a variety of plausible theories. "Studies of the future will likely be geared to address how specific brain areas execute their functions rather than identifying where in the brain these functions are instantiated." I think the most important thing in terms of content presented by this book was that the material was not presented as hard fact, and the book did not forget to mention the limitations of studies. For future data obtained from functional imaging the data should support other testing methods and not alone be presented as concrete evidence.

Where I have issues with the book begin with the repetitiveness of material. Many of the chapters repeated the material of previous chapters in the same amount of detail. At first when getting use to all the technical jargon and anatomical information this is good, but after a few chapters this become mentally taxing. Because each individual chapter was essential its own review, the amount of material in each chapter was more than enough information for one sitting. I found it quite difficult to pay attention and comprehend each chapter thereafter. Lastly, I can understand why the book focused on fear since it is well categorized emotion and the behavioral and physiological response are easily measured; however, I feel like the book should have covered a greater variety of emotions and more complex emotions such as love; it is not like there is a lack of scholarly material on such subjects.

Great.
Emotion had been largely ignored in cognitive neuroscience until some year ago (with LeDoux, Damasio, Panksepp leading the way) Now, there are various attempts to restore emotion as a very important and fruitfull line of research. Cognition cannot be understood stripped of emotion. This book is a collection of the many issues in affective neuroscience. There are various papers dealing with its neuronal correlates, its place in the cognitive hierarchy, with value, its conscious expression, among many other things. Emotion is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, and cognitive neuroscience is trying to explain it from many prespectives. This book is the culmination of these attempts. Must-read for anyone interested in emotion and neuroscience. ... Read more

Product Description
An Invitation to Cognitive Science provides a point of entry into thevast realm of cognitive science, offering selected examples of issuesand theories from many of its subfields. All of the volumes in thesecond edition contain substantially revised and as well as entirely newchapters.

Rather than surveying theories and data in the manner characteristic ofmany introductory textbooks in the field, An Invitation to CognitiveScience employs a unique case study approach, presenting a focusedresearch topic in some depth and relying on suggested readings to conveythe breadth of views and results. Each chapter tells a coherentscientific story, whether developing themes and ideas or describing aparticular model and exploring its implications.

The volumes are self contained and can be used individually inupper-level undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from introductorypsychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and decision sciences, tosocial psychology, philosophy of mind, rationality, language, and visionscience.

CONTENTS

The Study of Cognition Daniel Osherson Language:Introduction Lila R. Gleitman and Mark Liberman The Invention ofLanguage by Children: Environmental and Biological Influences on theAcquisition of Language Lila R Gleitman and Elissa L. Newport TheCase of the Missing Copula: The Interpretation of Zeroes inAfrican-American English William Labov Why the Child Holded theBaby Rabbits: A Case Study in Language Acquisition Steven PinkerThe Sound Structure of Mawu Words: A Case Study in the CognitiveScience of Speech Mark Liberman Exploring Developmental Changesin Cross-language Speech Perception Janet F. Werker LanguageAcquisition Steven Pinker Speaking and Misspeaking Gary S.Dell Comprehending Sentence Structure Janet Dean FodorComputational Aspects of the Theory of Grammar Mark SteedmanThe Forms of Sentences Howard Lasnik Lexical Semantics andCompositionality Barbara H. Partee Semantics Richard LarsonBrain Regions of Relevance to Syntactic Processing Edgar B. ZurifSome Philosophy of Language James Higginbotham Daniel N.Osherson, general editor ... Read more

Product Description
The Handbook of Cognitive Science provides an overview of recent developments in cognition research, relying upon non-classical approaches.Cognition is explained as the continuous interplay between brain, body, and environment, without relying on classical notions of computations and representation to explain cognition.The handbook serves as a valuable companion for readers interested in foundational aspects of cognitive science, and neuroscience and the philosophy of mind.The handbook begins with an introduction to embodied cognitive science, and then breaks up the chapters into separate sections on conceptual issues, formal approaches, embodiment in perception and action, embodiment from an artificial perspective, embodied meaning, and emotion and consciousness.Contributors to the book represent research overviews from around the globe including the US, UK, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands. ... Read more

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A collection of eleven essays dealing with methodological and empirical issues in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind, Representations convincingly connects philosophical speculation to concrete empirical research.

One of the outstanding methodological issues dealt with is the status of functionalism considered as an alternative to behavioristic and physicalistic accounts. of mental states and properties. The other issue is the status of reductionism considered as an account of the relation between the psychological and physical sciences. The first chapters present the main lines of argument which have made functionalism the currently favored philosophical approach to ontology of the mental.

The outlines of a psychology of propositional attitudes which emerges from consideration of current developments in cognitive science are contained in the remaining essays.

Not all of these essays are re-presentations. The new introductory essay seeks to present an overview and gives some detailed proposals about the contribution that functionalism makes to the solutions of problems about intentionality. The concluding essay, also not previously published, is a sustained examination of the relation between theories about the structure of concepts and theories about how they are learned. Finally, the essay "Three cheers for propositional attitudes", a critical examination of some of D. C. Dennett's ideas, has been completely rewritten for this volume.

A Bradford Book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Philosophy must respect cognitive science
The mind-body problem is of relatively recent vintage in Western philosophy, but it has become of importance of late due to the role it plays in the "strong A.I." problem. Although the field of artificial intelligence is no where near to creating thinking machines, let alone conscious ones, the debate over whether the latter is indeed possible has been raging now for several decades. Sometimes philosophy raises and debates issues that have no immediate practical significance, and the possibility of "strong A.I." is currently one of these. But developments in A.I. may indeed make these discussion not as vacuous as they currently are, and so it may in some sense be helpful to analyze some of these arguments, with also the hope that they can shed light on the nature of intelligence and help those who are interested in the building of an artificial mind.

The author considers his book a blending of three ideas, namely functionalism, intensionality, and mental representation. He introduces these via a consideration of the arguments against Cartesian dualism that were being formulated in the early 1960's. The author labels "logical behaviorism" and "central state identity theory" as being two of the strategies for doing this. In logical behaviorism, mental processes are semantically equivalent to behavioral dispositions, and the definitions of these reduced to that of stimulus and response parameters, these parameters left essentially undefined. The author gives counterexamples to show that logical behaviorism falls short of being a theory of mental causation that allows nontrivial psychological theories to be constructed. Throughout the book, the author makes the requirement that a science of mind must define mental properties in a way that makes them natural from the standpoint of psychological theory construction. He makes the point, interestingly, that information processing systems can provide a natural domain for this kind of theory construction. He thus admits the possibility that these systems can share our psychology but not share our physical make-up. He sums this up by saying that "philosophical theories about the nature of mental properties carry empirical commitments about the appropriate domains for psychological generalizations". Physicalism does not meet these requirements he states.

The author thus asserts the need for a "relational" treatment of mental properties, and so he turns his attention to "functionalism". Along with stimulus/response, this theory also allows reference to other mental states. But functionalism is not a reductionist philosophy like behaviorism, for it admits mentalistic concepts, and these are relationally defined and causal. It thus allows psychological theory construction of the kind that a psychologist requires. However, the author is careful to note that functionalism must deal with two problems, one being the development of a vocabulary which specifies the allowed kinds of descriptions for causes and effects, the other being that one must gaurantee that functional individuation only takes place when there is a mechanism that can carry out the function and only where there is an idea of what such a mechanism is. One wants, in functionalism, to avoid "pseudo-explanations" like those arising in physicalism.

This is where the author brings in the (Turing) machines, via "machine functionalism", which he claims solve the above problems. Functional definitions of psychological kinds are identical to the ones used to specify the program states of the computer. The author then elaborates in detail on just how machine functionalism is able to cope with the problems discussed. The Turing machine can provide a sufficient condition for the mechanical realizability of a functional theory, and thusmental processes correspond to a certain Turing machine process, and for each Turing machine process a mechanical realization.

He is careful though to not let this theory do more than it should (or can), such as circular arguments that involve the postulating of processes for which no mechanical realization can exist. He then addresses the degree to which functionalism could be said to be a successful theory. Could one really accept that it is relational properties that induce pain rather than an itch? His argument involves the difference between "qualia inversion" and "propositional attitude inversion", the former possible, the latter not. He argues that it is not a conceptual possibility of one person's belief being different from another's despite the identity of their inferential roles. He does however give references for possible ways of avoiding this.

The author is firmly committed to having both a philosophical and psychological theory of propositional attitudes. His attitude here is an interesting one, for I think it is a sign of things to come in the intersection between science and philosophy. He states that the goal of cognitive psychology is to systematize and explain how the propositional attitudes of an organism are affected by experience, by genes, and other propositional attitudes that it has. The success of such a psychological theory puts constraints on the construction of the philosophical theory. This, again, is a most interesting move, for it is an example of a new way of doing philosophy, namely that of constructing philosophical theories that must respect scientific results. For the author, the distinction between a philosophical and a psychological theory is heuristic, namely it is a quick way of indicating which kinds of constraints are being used in the motivating of a given strategy in theory construction. This book is an example of this kind of strategy, and as a whole it is a fascinating one, particularly in the context of current research in artificial intelligence.When philosophers see the rise of thinking machines in the near future, their philosophical theories will have to adapt themselves to the abilities of these machines. And the machines themselves will have their own (unique) theories about their abilities. ... Read more

Product Description

The Phenomenological Mind is the first book to properly introduce fundamental questions about the mind from the perspective of phenomenology. Key questions and topics covered include:

• What is phenomenology?
• naturalizing phenomenology and the empirical cognitive sciences
• phenomenology and consciousness
• consciousness and self-consciousness, including perception and action
• time and consciousness, including William James
• intentionality
• the embodied mind
• action
• knowledge of other minds
• situated and extended minds
• phenomenology and personal identity

Interesting and important examples are used throughout, including phantom limb syndrome, blindsight and self-disorders in schizophrenia, making The Phenomenological Mind an ideal introduction to key concepts in phenomenology, cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

Customer Reviews (1)

A good introduction
Although the language is a little advanced for anyone unfamiliar with analytic philosophy, this book is an accessible introduction to phenomenology from the perspective of analytic philosophy of mind.It presents new issues by reformatting valuable phenomenological ideas in terms that are easy for an analytical philosopher to understand and work with.I am working on a thesis project on phenomenology and I am an analytical philosopher, I found this book extremely helpful. ... Read more

Product Description
The rise cognitive science has been one of the most important intellectual developments of recent years, stimulating new approaches to everything from philosophy to film studies. This is an introduction to what cognitive science has to offer the humanities and particularly the study of literature. Hogan suggests how the human brain works and makes us feel in response to literature. He walks the reader through all of the major theories of cognitive science that are important for the humanities in order to understand the production and reception of literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Important Book for Humanists
This is an important book on an important subject.Hogan's purpose here is to introduce the humanities reader to the ways and insights of cognitive science and to summarize some of the attempts to apply those ways and insights to literature and the arts.This is an activity that is long overdue.The growth in knowledge of the human brain and human cognition has been as dramatic as the distance from that knowledge exhibited by studies within the humanities, which have often been more interested in `theorizing' science in postmodern ways than in joining with scientists to understand the humanities in more scientific ways.

While this effort is of enormous importance, it is at a very preliminary stage.For one thing, the actual functioning of the brain is so sophisticated and complex that many descriptions of cognitive processes are more metaphoric than conventionally `scientific'.That does not mean that they are not systematic or thoughtful.Rather, they depict the processes of cognition in terms that are far more simple than what is clearly going on.It is no surprise that Kant is key to their procedures, for the Kantian model of a human observer trying to bridge an unbridgeable gulf, constrained by decidedly `human' equipment but nevertheless attaining useful knowledge, is much in evidence here.

Given the `metaphoric' nature of this knowledge, it should come as no surprise that its conclusions often square with those of thinkers whose methods and materials predate those of cognitive science.For example, Hogan's interesting discussion about creativity involving both novelty and aptness squares precisely with Samuel Johnson's demands for novelty and what we would term something like `faithfulness to the realities of human psychology'.Hogan's argument to the effect that creativity at the highest levels carries common elements and is applicable across fields (the creativity required in writing an epic being comparable to the creativity required in teasing out the realities of the double helix) replicates Johnson's judgment that Newton could have written a fine epic poem, had he so desired.

Hogan is particularly strong in his critique of evolutionary psychology and the contradictory lessons that it often draws.His arguments are as trenchant as they are clear and he is able to offer very suggestive examples to support them.In short, this is an excellent introduction to what will become an immensely important subject, but one that carries no illusions with regard to the position in which we now find ourselves. ... Read more

Product Description
Written by an assembly of leading researchers in the field, this volume provides an innovative and non-technical introduction to cognitive science, and the key issues that animate the field. ... Read more