Categorizing Cognition provides an integrative treatment of complexity from the perspective of cognitive science. The volume lays out theoretical principles for understanding variations in complexity across tasks, highlighting implications for cognitive development, adult human cognition, cognitive neuroscience, comparative psychology, and computational models. For all those interested in understanding complexity (and how a human mind can try to cope with it), this book will be an invaluable resource.
Keith Holyoak, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles; coauthor of Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought; coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
Educators urgently need to build on sound, substantial efforts such as this one if they are serious about supporting development of cross-domain intellectual skills. Their long-standing reliance on weakly specified constructs like critical thinking or Bloom's taxonomy can't do the job.
Deanna Kuhn, Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
Graeme Halford and his colleagues have written an extraordinary book that draws on several decades of first-rate theorizing and research to provide a comprehensive account of the mechanisms underlying higher cognitive functions and their development—one that recognizes the fundamental importance of cognitive complexity to an understanding of the human mind. This book is a must-read for any serious student of cognition.
Philip David Zelazo, Nancy M. and John E. Lindahl Professor, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota
The book is an impressive piece of scholarship because it so clearly ties together classic and contemporary approaches to categorizing cognition. This is an advanced integrative and elegant piece of work, a must read for those in cognitive science.
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