New in This Version

• Over 130 embedded links to streaming videos engage students, augment discussions, and enrich hybrid and online courses
• Fully new Chapter 2 (“Research in Cognition: Investigating Mind and Brain”)

By Chapter

Chapter 1—Cognition: The Study of Information Processing

• Added connection to AI and ChatGPT and neural network models
• New discussion of applying cognition to modern contexts and challenges, including COVID-19, social division, and the rapid expansion of technology and resulting volume of information needing to be processed

Chapter 2—Research in Cognition: Investigating Mind and Brain

• New Chapter. This fully new chapter highlights the importance of the scientific method and provides key context for subsequent chapters by reviewing the nuts and bolts of cognitive psychology research, including basic issues confronted by cognitive researchers

Chapter 3—Perception: Basics of Information Intake

• Cross-cultural similarities due to Gestalt cues
• Application of grouping principles to music perception
• Expanded discussions of
• Global precedence, including reversal of the effect in some cultures, and relation of the effect to political orientation
• Multisensory integration, including:
• Association of color and taste perception and its variation by culture
• Marketing implications of vision–taste interactions
• “Sonic seasoning,” or how sounds modify taste experience
• Affordances, including dynamic affordances
• Perception in sports

Chapter 4—Identifying and Classifying Information

• Expanded discussions of
• Holistic versus analytic views of object recognition
• Scene consistency effect, and the role of cross-modal perception
• The nature of facial recognition, including
• The composite processing effect
• “Special” status of face recognition
• The influence of masks (COVID-19) on face recognition, including the role of culture
• Olfactory recognition, including cross-cultural differences and the ability to identify and label smells
• Exemplar versus prototype models of concept formation, including an applied study of concept formation in a college class
• Essentialism and its role in classifying human categories, and the role of essentialist categorization in dehumanization

Chapter 5—Mechanisms of Attention: Monitoring and Noticing Information

• Extensive revision of “guided search” approach to visual search, including guiding attributes and the phenomenon of pareidolia (seeing faces in non-face objects)
• Expanded discussions of
• Subitizing, including subitizing in nonvisual senses
• Visual attention in conditions of low-target prevalence, and how it may apply to everyday contexts, including identification (ID) checks
• Inattentional and change blindness, including  
• Movement speed’s role
• The relation to ADHD, and the “hunter” versus “farmer” distinction in attentional style
• Driving as a “case study in attention” including
• Low target prevalence
• Inattentional blindness
• Impact of cell phones on dividing attention
• New section on the role of attention in the context of automated assistance in motor vehicles

Chapter 6—Immediate Memory: The Control and Manipulation of Information

• Updated discussion of the relationship between executive attention and the cocktail party effect
• Re-organized discussion of the major approaches to immediate (short-term/working) memory
• Connection of visual coding in immediate memory to the phenomenon of aphantasia (with video)
• Added section on resource models of immediate memory and how it can be assessed with a delayed estimation task
• Expanded discussion of executive control and its application, including
• Mind wandering in applied contexts, including long-distance running
• Ironic processing and control and its application in sports
• Improving executive control and its limits

Chapter 7—Basic Processes in Long-Term Memory: Encoding and Retrieving Information

• Expanded discussions of
• Procedural/declarative memory
• The role of attention in encoding, including
• The phenomenon of attention (and inattention) contagion
• The consequences of having cell phones available during class
• Spacing versus cramming, including metacognition’s role
• Testing effect, including metacognition’s role
• Context dependency in memory, including a study of it using virtual reality
• Self-initiated retrieval, its failure, and pediatric vehicular heatstroke (babies left behind in closed cars)

Chapter 8—Malleability in Memory: Processes of Forgetting, Editing, and Distortion

• Expanded opening section on memory as a “living document” (with video)
• Extensive update to eyewitness memory coverage, including
• Lighting’s impact on perception
• Stereotypical facial features and cross-racial identification
• Lineup procedures and the sequential/simultaneous debate and the role of confidence
• Revised and updated coverage of “the Memory Wars,” the controversy over the validity of lost—then recovered—event memories, including
• The importance of the question in the context of technology and rampant misinformation
• A new subsection on the current status of the debate
• New section on “Memory Reconstruction in the Digital Age” and the role of the internet and smartphone technologies in reconstructive memory, including
• The internet’s impacts on certain aspects of cognition
• Transactive memory and cognitive offloading
• Social memory, including collective memory and the Mandela effect
• How “fake news” can lead to distortions in memory, and practical implications

Chapter 9—Autobiographical Memory: Remembering the Personal Past

• New section on extremes of autobiographical memory, including discussion of HSAM (highly superior autobiographical memory) and SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory
• Streamlined discussion of childhood amnesia
• Expanded discussions of
• The relationship between smell and memory
• Emotion and autobiographical memory, including the fading affect bias and a discussion of nostalgia
• Functions of autobiographical remembering
• New coverage of
• Reminiscence bump in individuals with Alzheimer’s
• The brain’s default mode network and autobiographical remembering
• New research on involuntary memory and whether trauma memories are unique
• New section on collective memories as flashbulbs, including collective memories of the January 6 insurrection and the COVID pandemic
• New and extensive section on future thinking, including
• Applications in clinical settings
• Its relation to nostalgia, and the concept of anticipated nostalgia

Chapter 10—Language I: Basic Issues and Speech Processing

• Expanded discussions of
• Phonology and how the sounds of language are produced and perceived (with videos)
• Phonemic restoration, including a study on the influence of COVID-19 on the effect
• Difficulty of discerning word boundaries, including the phenomenon of mondegreens (mishearing song lyrics)
• Child-Directed speech (CDS), including
• Impoverished CDS and a discussion of the “30-million-word gap” between children of lower and higher socio-economic status
• Maternal depression and CDS
• Turn-taking in conversation, including neuroscientific work using MEG scanning to examine it

Chapter 11—Language II: Reading and Comprehending

• Revision and update of how reading should be taught
• Extensive revision and update of dyslexia (with video)
• Extensive reorganization and expanded discussion of discourse processing, including
• New section on types of discourse (narrative versus expository texts)
• How mind wandering relates to text comprehension
• New section examining reading from print versus reading from screens, and the possibility of an overall “shallowing effect” caused by digital media
• Updated section on speed reading

Chapter 12—Reasoning, Judgment, and Decision Making

• New section on belief-consistent information processing, and how it forms the basis for other errors including belief bias, false consensus, and bias blind spot
• New section on the impact of misinformation on inductive reasoning, including
• Factors that lead to belief in misinformation
• Means of combating misinformation, including debunking, “pre-bunking” and their limitations
• New discussion of mental illness and gun violence as an example of illusory correlation and the availability heuristic
• Revised and updated discussions
• The recognition heuristic
• “Hot hand” perception
• Anchoring and adjustment heuristic
• Extensive revision of section on Improving Decision Making, including how “nudging” can improve choice and nudging during the COVID-19 pandemic

Chapter 13—Problem Solving and Creativity

• Revised section on mental set
• Added discussion of Luchins’ classic water jar problem
• Revised and updated section on stereotype threat in math problem solving
• New discussion of expert advantages in recognizing analogies in problem solving
• Revised discussion of the nature of expertise, with a critical discussion of the “10,000 hours of practice” claim
• Extensive revision of Archimedes example, including 
• The famous “Aha” moment
• Incubation and the “shower effect” of coming up with ideas in the shower
• Extensive update of creativity, including
• The definition of creativity and whether AI can be considered creative
• The relationship between personality and creativity
• The “mad-genius” paradox—creativity/psychopathology link
• The importance of creative constraints, creativity myths, and the role of culture in creativity
• Added discussion of different modes of creativity (deliberate, spontaneous, and flow)