Abstract
Cognition in the real world, edited by Alastair Smith, is a fresh take on the domain of cognition and could form the basis of an engaging final year Psychology undergraduate course. It is set out in such a way to make it suitable as a textbook for a series of lectures, with pedagogic questions at the end of each chapter as well more general questions for an academic audience. Each chapter includes references for relevant underlying theories and of the latest applied research in the area. However, this is not explicitly a textbook and could be read as a popular science book by a lay person with an interest in the field or be used as reference book by academics researching cognitive Psychology and related topics.
Whilst the book covers the main traditional areas of cognition, including brief overviews of their most relevant theories, it chooses more unusual real-world topics to introduce these areas. This is why this would be more of a final year course for Psychology undergraduates, a suitable add-on after having taken a cognitive Psychology course.
Many similar themes emerge over the chapters: the potential for using virtual reality for research, automation and human–computer interaction, individual differences or clinical applications. The type of applied research described in this book nicely demonstrates the issues with real-world research such as less control when moving outside the laboratory, contradictory results and the difficulty to get overall consensus. The book deals with this by clearly setting out findings and their limitations; and perhaps it is this difficulty in giving a neat summary that makes this book so appealing.
In the chapter on cultural effects on cognition, there is some mention of the problems of replicability. Given reproducibility is such an important issue currently in cognitive Psychology, this topic could have been included a bit more in other parts as well with perhaps some more consideration of typical sample and effect sizes in studies.
The book starts with the general area of Perception and Attention in Part 1 (its strongest suit), where topics such as real-world search and in particular driving have a rich solid research base to draw on. The chapter on drawing provides a useful link between clinical and cognitive aspects. In Part 2 on Movement and Action, the link between navigation and ageing is especially interesting as this seems to be an important area where more work could be done, and the book outlines how. Within Part 3 on Memory and Emotion, there is focus of the effect of emotion on memory, moving from the more traditional cognitive Psychology approach of memorizing lists in the lab toward a more holistic approach by incorporating the link between mood and recall. Music and cognition is about the influence of music on thinking rather than how we process music, which is also a more unusual angle. By approaching the chapter on eyewitness memory from the angle of the effect of emotion and memory, this huge area of research is made very accessible. There are interesting links to time expansion perception with arousal and driving/accidents. Also, Part 4 on language takes some unusual approaches, framing language comprehension and production within the act of ‘chatting’ and choosing interesting cases of language learning to focus on such as bilingualism. In the final Part 5 of learning and decision making, students will enjoy how considering the aspects of personality in learning leads to clinical implications, or how the study of decision making leads to an interesting foray into behavioural economics.
The nice short chapters are easy to digest with clear introductions and summaries. The key terms are very useful, and the book is easy to navigate including key references on the topics included. The chapters are written by the experts in the field, giving clear descriptions of the main theories, but often more focused on summarizing what the findings are from the key studies. This highlights that when researching cognition, the real world often does not lend itself to being able to find generalisable theories.
Beside teaching, this book would serve as useful reference for Perception readers who want an overview of the applied topics covered in the book (the chosen topics given under each of the five Parts listed above) and also as a way of generating research ideas around the gap between lab findings and more real-world questions.
