An Invitation to Cognitive Science: Thinking

An Invitation to Cognitive Science provides a point of entry into the vast realm of cognitive science, offering selected examples of issues and theories from many of its subfields. All of the volumes in the second edition contain substantially revised and as well as entirely new chapters.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. Each chapter tells a coherent scientific story, whether developing themes and ideas or describing a particular model and exploring its implications.The volumes are self contained and can be used individually in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses ranging from introductory psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and decision sciences, to social psychology, philosophy of mind, rationality, language, and vision science.

Daniel N. Osherson is at MIT.

Eldar Shafir, a student, close friend, and collaborator of Tversky's, is Class of 1987 Professor of Behavioral Science and Public Policy at Princeton University.

Amos Tversky (1937-1996) was a mathematical psychologist whose research in the cognitive and decision sciences has been enormously influential. From 1978 to 1996, Tversky taught at Stanford University, where he was the inaugural David-Brack Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Principal Investigator at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation.

Susan Carey is the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She is the first woman to receive the 2009 David E. Rumelhart Prize, given annually since 2001 for significant contributions to the theoretical foundation of human cognition.

Scott Atran is Research Director in Anthropology at France's National Center for Scientific Research and Visiting Professor of Psychology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is the coeditor, with Douglas Medin, of Folkbiology (MIT Press, 1999).