Cognitive Science: An Introduction Book

This new text introduces students to the concepts, methods and findings fundamental to the science of mind. It is the first genuine textbook introduction to cognitive science, and in presenting a comprehensive account of the discipline, it encourages critical thinking by presenting alternative views. Throughout the text students are introduced to case studies and particular points of contention in the field, and also invited to explore issues further through discussion and self-assessment questions. Chapters also include learning objectives, summaries and reading lists. The textbook grounds theoretical issues by reference to a concrete scenario throughout each chapter: a family conversing over breakfast. The opening chapter discusses the emergence and nature of Cognitive Science and introduces the topics of succeeding chapters in the context of the scenario. The next two chapters describe work at the heart of the discipline: the nature of mental computation and the architecture of the mind. No single text can hope to cover the diversity and breadth of research and so succeeding chapters are exemplars of the discipline. A chapter on how we perceive objects and faces and one on how we speak and perceive speech is followed by a chapter on how we read. In each case the student is led through the computational questions. The following three chapters concern the nature of language and language use. The first focuses on the structure of sentences, the second on meaning and collaborative processes in conversation and the third on the question of how communicative competence develops. How we learn, remember and solve problems is the focus of the next two chapters and a variety of computational approaches are surveyed and considered. How we act in the world on the basis of our knowledge is considered in the final chapters.Read More