Foundations Of Cognitive Psychology

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How does memory work? How do we understand language, and produce it so that others can understand? How do we perceive our environment? How do we infer from patterns of light or sound the presence of objects in our environment, and their properties? How do we reason, and solve problems? How do we think? These are some of the foundational questions that cognitive psychology examines. They are foundational partly because each concerns the nature of a basic psychological ability, abilities that we often take for granted, yet which are vital to our normal, healthy functioning and are key to our understanding of what it means to be human. And they are foundational partly because they are important for psychology as a whole, and not just cognitive psychology. For instance, how canwe hope to understand completely the behaviour of employees in an organization unless we first understand their perceptions and memories, and how they reason and attempt to solve problems? How canwe understand the way inwhich people interact to shape one another’s opinions if we do not understand how people understand and process language, and how they make judgements? Throughout this book, the various authors tackle these and other questions, and show you how much of these foundations cognitive psychologists have so far uncovered. The book begins with an exploration of perceptual processes, moves to a discussion of categorization and language, through to memory, and then to thinking processes. The last part of the book is devoted to wider issues: to topics that have been thought to present a challenge to cognitive psychology – such as consciousness and emotion – and to some of the themes and theoretical questionswhich pervade the cognitive approach

Foundations Of Cognitive Psychology