A state of the art introduction to experimental psychology

HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY, VOLUME 4: EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. A. F. Healyand R. W. Proctor (Eds.). Wiley, New Jersey, 2003. No. of pages 712. ISBN 0-471-39262-6. Price£93.95 (hardback).

The fourth in a series of 12 comprehensive volumes, Experimental Psychology sets out to give bothprofessional psychologists and students an accessible, state-of-the-art review of the field. The volume,which takes a predominantly process-oriented approach to the organization of material, is divided intoeight parts: modulatory processes, sensory processes, perceptual processes, human performance,elementary learning and memory processes, complex learning and memory processes, language andinformation processing, and finally thinking and applications. The eight major parts are sub-divided intochapters, three per part, and each chapter is written by an authority on the topic in question. Considerablethought has clearly gone into the organization of the volume as a whole, and into the individual chapters.

Commencing the volume with an examination of consciousness introduces the reader to some ofthe most enduring and intriguing issues in psychology. Following consciousness are chapters onmotivation, and mood, cognition and memory. Part Two on sensory processes achieves a balanceoften missing in cognitive psychology texts by including chapters on audition and touch, as well asvision. Part Three focuses on visual perception, depth perception, and speech production andperception.

Part Four examines Human performance, and includes chapters on attention, action selection andmotor control. The attention chapter in particular covers a very large volume of research andmanages to do this without sacrificing breadth for coherence.

Conditioning and learning, animal memory and cognition and sensory and working memorytogether make up Part Five, Elementary learning and memory processes. Conditioning and learningresearch occupies a less significant place in psychology today than it did in the past, and reviews inundergraduate psychology textbooks are often outdated and even pedestrian. It is therefore refreshingto see an entire chapter devoted to this topic, acknowledging the significance of this particular field ofpsychological research.

Complex learning and memory processes includes chapters on semantic memory and priming,episodic and autobiographical memory, and procedural memory and skill acquisition. The latterchapter covers a vast amount of material, arguably too much, and consequently this important area ofexperimental psychology is given a rather superficial treatment. Some of the important issues anddebates are acknowledged, but others are not (e.g. the role of examples and rules in skill acquisition).Implicit learning might reasonably have been the focus for a separate chapter, rather than merely asection within a chapter.

Language and information processing consists of chapters on language comprehension, reading,and text comprehension and discourse processing. These chapters together make sense of the vastamount of literature devoted to language acquisition and use, a literature which draws on research incomputational linguistics, education, information engineering and neuroscience, amongst others.While these chapters are well-informed and up-to-date, what they fail to capture is the dynamic,interdisciplinary and applied nature of research on speech and language processing in particular. This isdescribed only very briefly later on in the chapter by Nickerson and Pew on applied experimental work,and seems a lost opportunity.

While some chapters take a fresh look at various topics, others are arguably more conservative inapproach. The chapter ‘Reasoning and problem solving’ engages the reader’s interest well, and reviews theselectedmaterial efficiently. However, the review of current research on reasoning is a little disappointing inthat it deviates little from standard treatment of the subject over the past decade. It is true that the researchreviewed is right up-to-date, but topics such as counterfactual thinking (e.g. Byrne & McEleney, 2000;Segura, Fernandez-Berrocal, & Byrne, 2002) and individual differences in reasoning (e.g. Stanovich &West, 2000; Newstead, Handley, Harley, Wright, & Farrelly, 2004) are noticeable omissions. Within thesame chapter, the topic Judgment under uncertainty is given a very sparse treatment, and Decision makingis not covered at all. With just eight pages allocated to review the literature on problem solving, it isunsurprising that treatment of this topic within the chapter is a disappointment.

The volume concludes with a chapter examining applied aspects of experimental psychology.This chapter examines the historical roots of applied psychology, and presents some interesting factsabout some of the early research published in journals of experimental psychology and appliedpsychology. Recent examples of applied research are many, and the chapter succeeds in giving the

638 Book reviews

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 18: 633–639 (2004)

reader an idea of the range and diversity of applications. Of course, having practical implications isnot the same as having practical impact, as the authors point out, and maximizing the impact ofapplied research clearly remains a problem for experimental psychology.

The chapters are written in an accessible and engaging style, and each gives a cohesive andcomprehensive review of the topic in question. Many of the chapters adopt a novel approach, givingthe topics under discussion a freshness and vitality that is often missing in psychology textbooks. Forexample, the chapter ‘Procedural memory and skill acquisition’ immediately points to the rather oddposition attention occupies in research on skill. The inclusion of chapters on topics that otherpsychology texts often omit or refer to only in passing, such as action selection and animal memoryand cognition, for example, give the volume an integrity and completeness that is much needed ifreaders are to gain an understanding of the beginnings and current state of experimental psychology.

The volume as a whole provides a very welcome and largely balanced overview of what is now anexpansive body of literature on experimental psychology. The work selected represents researchcarried out in different traditions, and by a truly international group of researchers. The editorsacknowledge that there are some gaps within the volume, partly due to constraints on length, andpartly due to material chosen for inclusion by chapter authors. It is therefore inevitable that there willbe some omissions. Surprisingly, the volume is silent on the psychology of planning, a topic that hasgained considerable momentum in recent years (see Morris & Ward, 2004), yet is referred to almostin passing within the present text. Nevertheless, this particular volume is an eminently readablereference that well represents the current state of experimental psychology.

REFERENCES

Byrne, R. M. J., & McEleney, A. (2000). Counterfactual thinking about actions and failures to act.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1318–1331.

Morris, R., & Ward, G. (2004). The cognitive psychology of planning. London: Psychology Press.Newstead, S. E., Handley, S. J., Harley, C., Wright, H., & Farrelly, D. (2004). Individual differencesin deductive reasoning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57A (1), 33–60.

Segura, S., Fernandez-Berrocal, P., & Byrne, R. M. J. (2002). Temporal and causal order effects inthinking about what might have been. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55A(4), 1295–1305.

Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2000). Individual differences in reasoning: implications for therationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 645–665.

ALISON GREENThe Open University, UK

Published online in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1033

Book reviews 639

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 18: 633–639 (2004)