John Robert Anderson

"Humans share the same basic cognitive architecture with all primates, but they have evolved abilities to exercise abstract control over cognition and to process more complex relational patterns. The human cognitive architecture consists of a set of largely independent modules associated with different brain regions. Anderson discusses in detail how these various modules can combine to produce behaviors as varied as driving a car and solving an algebraic equation, but focuses principally on two of the modules: the declarative and the procedural. The declarative module involves a memory system that, moment by moment, attempts to give each person the most appropriate possible window into his or her past. The procedural module involves a central system that strives to develop a set of productions that will enable the most adaptive response from any state of the modules. Newell argued that the answer to his question must take the form of a cognitive architecture, and Anderson organizes his answer around the ACT-R architecture, but broadens it by bringing in research from all areas of cognitive science, including how recent work in brain imaging maps onto the cognitive architecrure."--Jacket.

A comprehensive overview of the current state of research on memory and mind, this book captures the career and influence of Gordon H. Bower (as told by 22 of his students and colleagues), showing how Bower's research and mentoring of students has broadly and deeply affected modern research. In addition to many personal reminisces about Bower's research and graduate training in the 1950s through 1990s, this book illustrates how Bower's early research and ideas lay the groundwork for much of modern psychological studies of memory, expertise, psychological assessment, and mental imagery.