Cognitive Psychology For Dummies E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 550

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Demystify the core concepts of cognitive psychology Written specifically for psychology students - and not other academics - Cognitive Psychology For Dummies is an accessible and entertaining introduction to the field. Unlike the dense and jargon-laden content found in most psychology textbooks, this practical guide provides readers with easy-to-understand explanations of the fundamental elements of cognitive psychology so that they are able obtain a firm grasp of the material. Cognitive Psychology For Dummies follows the structure of a typical university course, which makes it the perfect supplement for students in need of a clear and enjoyable overview of the topic. The complexities of a field that explores internal mental processes - including the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems - can be overwhelming for first-year psychology students. This practical resource cuts through the academic-speak to provide a clear understanding of the most important elements of cognitive psychology. * Obtain a practical understanding of the core concepts of cognitive psychology * Supplement required course reading with clear and easy-to-understand overviews * Gain confidence in your ability to apply your knowledge of cognitive psychology * Prepare for upcoming exams or topic discussions Cognitive Psychology For Dummies is the perfect resource for psychology students who need a clear and readable overview of the core concepts of cognitive psychology.

Leseprobe

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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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)

Cognitive Psychology For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/cognitivepsychology to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Cover

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Cognitive Psychology

Chapter 1: Understanding Cognition: How You Think, See, Speak and Are!

Introducing Cognitive Psychology

Researching Cognitive Psychology

Acknowledging the Limitations of Cognitive Psychology

Chapter 2: Studying Cognitive Psychology Means Studying the Everyday

Recognising the Relevance of Cognitive Psychology

Studying Cognitive Systems to See What Goes Right … and Wrong

Accepting that Cognitive Psychology Doesn’t Have All the Answers

Chapter 3: Improving Academic Performance with Cognitive Psychology

Engaging Your Perception and Attention

Improving Your Learning and Memory

Polishing Up Your Academic Reading and Writing Skills

Using Your Thinking Powers More Effectively

Part II: Attending to the Subtleties of Perception

Chapter 4: Perceiving the World around You

Delving into Your Perception System

Seeing What’s Going on in the World

Constructing What You See in the World

Following a World in Motion

Chapter 5: Seeing How People See Depth and Colour

Seeing the Third Dimension

Living Life in Colour

Chapter 6: Recognising Objects and People

‘Just Move a Bit, I Can’t See the View!’ Separating Figures from Background

‘What’s It Meant to Be?’ Perceiving Patterns to Recognise Objects

‘Hey, I Know You!’ Identifying Faces

Chapter 7: Atten-hut! Paying Attention to Attention

‘Hey, You!’ Grabbing Attention

‘Now Concentrate!’ Controlling Attention

Running on Autopilot

When Things Go Wrong: Attention Disorders

Part III: Minding Your Memory

Chapter 8: Where Did I Put My Keys? Short-Term Memory

Splitting Memory Up

Putting Your Memory to Work

Processing Your Memory – Executively

Chapter 9: You Don’t Remember Our Wedding Day? Long-Term Memory

Digging Deep: Levels of Processing Memories

Classifying Long-Term Memories

Storing and Recalling Long-Term Memories

Looking at When Memory Goes Wrong

Chapter 10: Knowing about Knowledge

Thinking of Knowledge as Concepts

Organising Knowledge in Your Brain

Representing Items in Your Head

Putting Aside Knowledge in Your Brain

Chapter 11: Discovering Why You Forget Things

‘It’s on the Tip of My Tongue!’ Forgetting Things

Intending to Forget

Creating False Memories

Chapter 12: Memorising in the Real World

Remembering Yourself and Your Life

Flashing Back in Time

Being an Eyewitness

Part IV: Communicating What Your Brain Thinks about Language

Chapter 13: Communicating the Extraordinary Nature of Language

Monkey Business: Looking at Language in the Animal Kingdom

Discovering What Makes Human Language Special

‘Uggh. Mama. Me Want Be Psychologist!’ Developing Language Skills

Chapter 14: Studying the Structure of Language

Staring at the Smallest Language Units

Working with Words

Seeing What Sentences Can Do

Building Stories that Mean Something

Chapter 15: Talking about Language Perception and Production

Decoding the Art of Reading

Putting Together Coherent Sentences

Recognising Speech as Speech

Delving into Language Problems

Chapter 16: Discovering the Links between Language and Thought

Investigating the Idea that You Need Language to Think

Thinking without Language: Possible or not?

Comparing the Opposing Arguments

Part V: Thinking Your Way around Thought

Chapter 17: Uncovering How People Solve Problems

Experimenting to Reveal Thought Processes: Gestalt Psychology

Watching the Rise of the Computers: Information Processing Approaches

Examining Expert Problem-Solving

Modelling How Learners Learn with Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Chapter 18: Thinking Logically about Reasoning

Testing Human Logic

‘It’s Only (Formally) Logical, Captain’

Reasoning with Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

Explaining Reasoning with Models

Chapter 19: Making Up Your Mind: Decision-Making

Researching Real-World Decision-Making

Deciding to Look into Your Brain

Altering People’s Decisions

Chapter 20: Thinking Clearly about the Role of Emotions

How Do You Feel? Introducing Emotions

Recognising the Reach of Emotion

Looking Behind the Reality: How Mood Interacts with Cognition

Encountering Emotions Going Wrong

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 21: Studying Patients with Brain Damage

Smelling More than Normal

Losing Track of Movement

Failing to Recognise Faces

(Almost) Neglecting the World

Forgetting What You Learn

Knowing that Knowledge Is Slipping Away

Developing without Language

Reading but Not Understanding Words

Struggling to Speak Grammatically

Changing Personality

Chapter 22: Ten Tips for Writing Successful Research Reports

Using the Correct Format

Including Background Research

Criticising Existing Research

Developing Testable Hypotheses

Providing Detailed Methods

Presenting Your Results Clearly

Interpreting Results within Theories

Suggesting Future Research

Avoiding Criticising the Sample

Don’t Knock Ecological Validity

Chapter 23: Busting Ten Cognitive Psychology Myths

Using Your Whole Brain

Seeing Depth with Two Eyes

Failing to See Colour, in Men

Falling for a Symmetrical Face

Memorising like a Tape Recorder

Listening to Mozart Makes You Smarter

Getting Aggressive about Computer Games

Hunting for Free Will

Communicating Differently as a Man or a Woman

Hypnotising You to Do Anything

About the Authors

Cheat Sheet

Advertisement Page

Connect with Dummies

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Introduction

The fact that you’re reading this book implies that you have an interest in cognitive psychology or you’re 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 it’s 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.

About This Book

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 it’s the only way to express something, but overall we make the tone as friendly as possible. We even include some jokes (if you don’t spot any, it’s because we’re 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. Don’t 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!

Conventions Used in This Book

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 can’t escape, though we also use italics for emphasis.

Boldfaced

text indicates part of a list or numbered steps.

Unlike most textbooks in psychology, we don’t include references or in-text citations. We mention the name of a researcher when we feel that the person’s 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 don’t 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 they’re interesting and add a lot to the text.

Foolish Assumptions

Hundreds of books on cognitive psychology exist. Many are technical, long, dry, specialised or cover a very narrow area of cognition. We wrote Cognitive Psychology For Dummies assuming the following:

You want to understand how people think, see and remember things.

You have questions about how the human mind works.

You’re starting a course in cognitive psychology and haven’t studied it before.

You’ve found other textbooks too complicated, dry or technical.

You’re simply interested in people.

You have a basic understanding of psychology, probably from an introductory course or reading

Psychology For Dummies

.

You want to discover a few tips on improving your own cognition.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, we use icons in the margins to help you find certain types of information. Here’s a list of what they mean.

When you see this icon, we’re giving you a bit of information that may come in handy someday.

Don’t forget the information by this icon! It shows what you need to pick up from the particular paragraph.

Like most sciences, cognitive psychology has a lot of terms and particular usages. We highlight them with this icon so that you can join in the conversation wherever cognitive psychologists gather.

This icon flags text that rises above what you need for a basic understanding of the topic at hand. You can skip these paragraphs if you prefer without harming your comprehension of the main point. We often use this icon when describing studies in detail or the brain regions involved in cognition.

We use this icon to point out how the information under discussion has applications or is observed in reality.

This icon indicates a task or exercise to perform on yourself or someone you know. The exercises are based on examples we provide in the text or on an Internet resource.

Beyond the Book

The area of cognitive psychology is so vast that its contents would fill far more than this book. Given that it’s really interesting and exciting, we want to give you as much chance to learn about it as possible, and so we put some extras on the Internet. In addition to the printed chapters, you can find loads more (free!) Cognitive Psychology For Dummies information at www.dummies.com/extras/cognitivepsychology.

In an online cheat sheet found at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/cognitivepsychology, we include a quick guide to some central cognitive psychology ideas on memory, language and problem solving, among other topics.

Where to Go from Here

We organise this book in a logical representation of how the human brain works (information comes in, is remembered, spoken and thought about), but each chapter is self-contained so that you can dip in and out at your leisure. Except for the first and last parts, each part deals with a different element of cognitive psychology, so you can pick out the sections that you’re most interested in or are struggling with the most.

Use the table of contents and index to find what’s most relevant to you. If you’re new to the subject, you may want to start with Chapter 1 and read the book in sequence, but you don’t have to read it cover to cover.

We hope that you find the book educational, informative and entertaining. We think that you’ll like it and learn a lot about yourself as you go. If you do, tell your friends about it!

Part I

Getting Started with Cognitive Psychology

Go to www.dummies.com for bonus information about cognitive psychology and almost any other topic that interests you.

In this part …

Understand what cognitive psychology is and why it’s so darn important.

Realise how cognitive psychology influences every aspect of the human experience that involves thinking.

Find useful tips on how cognitive psychology can improve your cognitive skills in school, college, university and almost all walks of life.

Chapter 1

Understanding Cognition: How You Think, See, Speak and Are!

In This Chapter

Defining cognitive psychology

Detailing the discipline’s research methods

Looking at some limitations

How do you know that what you see is real? Would you notice if someone changed her identity in front of you? How can you be sure that when you remember what you saw, you’re remembering it accurately? Plus, how can you be sure that when you tell someone something that the person understands it in the same way as you do? What’s more fascinating than looking for answers to such questions, which lie at the heart of what it means to be … well … you!

Cognitive psychology is the study of all mental abilities and processes about knowing. Despite the huge area of concern that this description implies, the breadth of the subject’s focus still sometimes surprises people. Here, we introduce you to cognitive psychology, suggesting that it’s fundamentally a science. We show how cognitive psychologists view the subject from an information-processing account and how we use this view to structure this book.