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The Psychology of Thinking is an engaging, interesting and easy-to-follow guide into the essential concepts behind our reasoning, decision-making and problem-solving. Clearly structured into 3 sections, this book will;
- Introduce your students to organisation of thought including memory, language and concepts;
- Expand their understanding of reasoning including inference and induction as well as motivation and the impact of mood;
- Improve their thinking in action, focusing on decision-making and problem-solving.
Suitable for any course in which students need to develop their judgement and decision-making skills, this book uses clever examples of real-world situations to help them understand and apply the theories discussed to their everyday thinking.
List of contents
Section 1: The Organization of Human Thought
Chapter 1: The Psychology of Thinking
Chapter 2: The Psychology of Similarity
Chapter 3: Knowledge and Memory
Chapter 4: Concepts and Categories
Chapter 5: Language and Thought
Section 2: Thinking and Reasoning
Chapter 6: Inference and Induction
Chapter 7: Deductive Reasoning
Chapter 8: Context, Motivation, and Mood
Section 3: Thinking in Action: Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Expertise
Chapter 9: Decision-Making
Chapter 10: Problem-Solving
Chapter 11: Expertise and Expert Thinking
About the author
John Paul Minda is a Professor of Psychology and a member of the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University, in London, Ontario. As a researcher, he is interested in thinking as it relates to concepts and categories. He runs a research laboratory that investigates how people learn new categories and represent them with concepts. He also studies how conceptual structure interacts with and affects behavioural outcomes. He has done research on medical expertise and on the kinds of reasoning tasks that physicians engage in. As an instructor, and as a psychologist in general, he is interested in other aspects of thinking as well. Every year since 2003, he has taught a course on the Psychology of Thinking.
Summary
An engaging, interesting and easy-to-follow guide into the essential concepts behind our reasoning, decision-making and problem-solving.
