Cognition (4^th Ed., Revised edition)
The Thinking Animal

By describing experiments that control, manipulate and measure mental processes, this book shows how we can discover the answers to key questions about the mind, such as: 'Can we focus attention on more than one thing?' and 'Is language unique to humans?' Written in a down-to-earth narrative prose that avoids jargon, addresses the reader directly and draws on the authors' unique style ('suppose Willingham split his pants at a junior high dance ?'), this text takes complex experiments in cognitive psychology and describes them for undergraduate students. Willingham has a record of excellence in translating cognitive psychology research for K-12 teachers with his bestselling Why Don't Students Like School? and other popular books. This book applies the clear and approachable prose style towards building foundational knowledge in cognitive psychology for undergraduates.

1. Introduction: cognitive psychologists' approach to research; 2. Methods of cognitive psychology; 3. Visual perception; 4. Attention; 5. Sensory and working memory; 6. Long term memory structure; 7. Long term memory processes. Memory encoding; 8. Memory retrieval; 9. Concepts and categories; 10. Language structure; 11. Language processing; 12. Visual imagery; 13. Decision making and reasoning; 14. Problem solving.

Daniel T. Willingham is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1992. He has won multiple department and university teaching awards. His research focuses on the application of cognitive principles to K-16 education, and his work on that subject has appeared in sixteen languages. In 2017 he was appointed by President Obama to serve as a Member of the National Board for Education Sciences.
Cedar Riener is a cognitive psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at Randolph-Macon College, Virginia. He researches perception of the natural world and how the state of our body influences that perception.