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Thinking: Readings in cognitive science
Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Vol. 23, pp. 225to Pergamon Press Ltd. 1979. Printed in Great Britain.
BOOK
226.
REVIEWS
Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science. Edited by P, N. JOHNSON-LAIRD and P. C. WASON. bridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977. 615 pp. Price: hardback edition L17.50.
Cam-
perhaps, at first sight, a long step from psychosomatic medicine to cognitive psychology. Yet I would heartily recommend this book to an; readers of this journal, not Last because it is such a useful survey of a field which is the hub of os~cholo~v. The readings in the book cover 7 areas: problem soiving; deduction; conceptual t&king; hypotheses; inference and comprehension; language, culture and thinking; and imagery and internal representation. Mere comprehensiveness is not the only editorial criterion. The editors have a clear conceptual framework, that of postChomskyan information theory, into which they embed their selection of readings by concise and helpful introductions. This policy makes the book a vindication of the value of this information theory approach, and reveals the previous impoverishment of the subject by behaviourism. There are few papers in the book which are of direct relevance to psychosomatics. The papers on conceptual thinking, especially the one by Sokal on classification, give useful hints about defining clinical syndromes, and on the &agnostic process. A paper by Sch&der analyses some of the distinctions between scientific and commonsense thinking, and in doing so comments on the inference of dispositions, such as personality type, from behaviour. Cole contributes a paper on the effects of schooling on reasoning which illuminates the clinical concept of intelligence if only because of its avoidance of the assumption of the superiority of either schooled or non-schooled reasoners when judged in a context outside their culture. There is also a paper and editorial comments by Wason which provide a cognitive model of the resistance of assumptions to change, even in the face of disconfirmation. Unfortunately, the account is not balanced by a discussion of the effective responses to uncertainty and its reduction, even when relief is brought about by premature hypothesis formation. This omission is underlined by the mention of an experimental subject who broke down during an early experiment, and had to be hospitalized. The explicit relevance of the book would not itself justify buying it unless one were a cognitive psychologist. There are also some minor faults, including a certain amount of repetition in the section on conceptual thinking, and an irritatingly fatuous reference to E.C.T. as an example of ‘magical thinking’. I would recommend buying the book, or at least persuading a library to buy it, mainly because of what is explicit in it. It presents a new approach to the study of reasoning which has come partly from work on artificial intelligence, but has also benefited by the enormous expansion in linguistic interest in the generation of grammatical utterances from something approaching thought. Both fields have thrown up the concept of an algorithm, a pre-determined inferential or problem-solving procedure which is applicable to a family of situations. This notion is not only applicable to the manipulation of symbolic thoughts, but also the processing of non-symbolic signs such as the metaphors of dreams. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that it can also be applied to the ways in which bodily change is also a representational system, and allows a kind of reasoning with the external world. If this link is made, then this book will become a valuable mine of ideas in cognition which will have psychosomatic analogies. IT IS
DIGBY
Brain Systems and Psychological z&5.9.5.
Concepts.
JOHN BODDY.
TANTAM
John Wiley, New York, 1978, pp. 461. Price
BOOK sets out to provide an introduction to psychobiology. The author has a pleasant readable style and the text is well set out and lavishly illustrated. There is much to interest a clinical psychiatrist in this book and probably a great deal of the information would be new. However, as the author must, perforce, cover very basic concepts, there would be an enormous amount of redundancy for most psychiatrists, particularly those already having some biological interest. The author’s theoretical approach is strongly influenced by that peculiar variant of behaviourism so appealing to British academic psychology. The jargon of this particular approach does rather THIS
225
BOOK
226.
REVIEWS
Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science. Edited by P, N. JOHNSON-LAIRD and P. C. WASON. bridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977. 615 pp. Price: hardback edition L17.50.
Cam-
perhaps, at first sight, a long step from psychosomatic medicine to cognitive psychology. Yet I would heartily recommend this book to an; readers of this journal, not Last because it is such a useful survey of a field which is the hub of os~cholo~v. The readings in the book cover 7 areas: problem soiving; deduction; conceptual t&king; hypotheses; inference and comprehension; language, culture and thinking; and imagery and internal representation. Mere comprehensiveness is not the only editorial criterion. The editors have a clear conceptual framework, that of postChomskyan information theory, into which they embed their selection of readings by concise and helpful introductions. This policy makes the book a vindication of the value of this information theory approach, and reveals the previous impoverishment of the subject by behaviourism. There are few papers in the book which are of direct relevance to psychosomatics. The papers on conceptual thinking, especially the one by Sokal on classification, give useful hints about defining clinical syndromes, and on the &agnostic process. A paper by Sch&der analyses some of the distinctions between scientific and commonsense thinking, and in doing so comments on the inference of dispositions, such as personality type, from behaviour. Cole contributes a paper on the effects of schooling on reasoning which illuminates the clinical concept of intelligence if only because of its avoidance of the assumption of the superiority of either schooled or non-schooled reasoners when judged in a context outside their culture. There is also a paper and editorial comments by Wason which provide a cognitive model of the resistance of assumptions to change, even in the face of disconfirmation. Unfortunately, the account is not balanced by a discussion of the effective responses to uncertainty and its reduction, even when relief is brought about by premature hypothesis formation. This omission is underlined by the mention of an experimental subject who broke down during an early experiment, and had to be hospitalized. The explicit relevance of the book would not itself justify buying it unless one were a cognitive psychologist. There are also some minor faults, including a certain amount of repetition in the section on conceptual thinking, and an irritatingly fatuous reference to E.C.T. as an example of ‘magical thinking’. I would recommend buying the book, or at least persuading a library to buy it, mainly because of what is explicit in it. It presents a new approach to the study of reasoning which has come partly from work on artificial intelligence, but has also benefited by the enormous expansion in linguistic interest in the generation of grammatical utterances from something approaching thought. Both fields have thrown up the concept of an algorithm, a pre-determined inferential or problem-solving procedure which is applicable to a family of situations. This notion is not only applicable to the manipulation of symbolic thoughts, but also the processing of non-symbolic signs such as the metaphors of dreams. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that it can also be applied to the ways in which bodily change is also a representational system, and allows a kind of reasoning with the external world. If this link is made, then this book will become a valuable mine of ideas in cognition which will have psychosomatic analogies. IT IS
DIGBY
Brain Systems and Psychological z&5.9.5.
Concepts.
JOHN BODDY.
TANTAM
John Wiley, New York, 1978, pp. 461. Price
BOOK sets out to provide an introduction to psychobiology. The author has a pleasant readable style and the text is well set out and lavishly illustrated. There is much to interest a clinical psychiatrist in this book and probably a great deal of the information would be new. However, as the author must, perforce, cover very basic concepts, there would be an enormous amount of redundancy for most psychiatrists, particularly those already having some biological interest. The author’s theoretical approach is strongly influenced by that peculiar variant of behaviourism so appealing to British academic psychology. The jargon of this particular approach does rather THIS
225