An Invitation To Cognitive Science Visual Cognition And Action

Rather than surveying theories and data in the manner characteristic of many introductory textbooks in the field, An Invitation to Cognitive Science employs a unique case study approach, presenting a focused research topic in some depth and relying on suggested readings to convey the breadth of views and results.

Presents the work of linguists, psychologists, philosophers, computer scientists, biologists, and engineers in an interdisciplinary coverage of contemporary cognitive science. The topics are organized around language, visual cognition and action, and thinking, and range from arm trajectories to human rationality, from acoustic phonetics to mental imagery. Thoughtful and occasionally brilliant. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

These essays tackle some of the central issues in visual cognition, presenting experimental techniques from cognitive psychology, new ways of modeling cognitive processes on computers from artificial intelligence, and new ways of studying brain organization from neuropsychology, to address such questions as: How do we recognize objects in front of us? How do we reason about objects when they are absent and only in memory? How do we conceptualize the three dimensions of space? Do different people do these things in different ways? And where are these abilities located in the brain? While this research, which appeared as a special issue of the journal Cognition, is at the cutting edge of cognitive science, it does not assume a highly technical background on the part of readers. The book begins with a tutorial introduction by the editor, making it suitable for specialists and nonspecialists alike.

Rather than surveying theories and data in the manner characteristic of many introductory textbooks in the field, An Invitation to Cognitive Science employs a unique case study approach, presenting a focused research topic in some depth and relying on suggested readings to convey the breadth of views and results.

This special issue examines the basic processes of space perception and how these processes interact with action planning and motor control.

This 2006 book explores how people's subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action provide part of the fundamental grounding for human cognition and language. Cognition is what occurs when the body engages the physical and cultural world and must be studied in terms of the dynamical interactions between people and the environment. Human language and thought emerge from recurring patterns of embodied activity that constrain ongoing intelligent behavior. We must not assume cognition to be purely internal, symbolic, computational, and disembodied, but seek out the gross and detailed ways that language and thought are inextricably shaped by embodied action. Embodiment and Cognitive Science describes the abundance of empirical evidence from many disciplines, including work on perception, concepts, imagery and reasoning, language and communication, cognitive development, and emotions and consciousness, that support the idea that the mind is embodied.

Cognitive neuroscience has grown into a rich and complex discipline, some 35 years after the term was coined. Given the great expanse of the field, an inclusive and authoritative resource such as this handbook is needed for examining the current state-of-the-science in cognitive neuroscience. Spread across two volumes, the 59 chapters included in this handbook systemically survey all aspects of cognitive neuroscience, spanning perception, attention, memory, language, emotion, self and social cognition, higher cognitive functions, and clinical applications. Additional chapters cover topics ranging from the use of top-down cognitive processes in visual perception to the representation and recognition of objects and spatial relations; attention and its relationship to action as well as visual motor control; language and related core abilities including semantics, speech perception and production, the distinction between linguistic competence and performance, and the capacity for written language. Special coverage is also given to chapters describing the psychopharmacology of cognition, the theory of mind, the neuroscience underlying the regulation of emotion, and neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence that supports the special status of self-knowledge in memory. This handbook provides a comprehensive compendium of research on cognitive neuroscience that will be widely accessible to students, researchers, and professionals working in this exciting and growing field.