Book review: The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning

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Review of The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
Keith J. Holyoak and Robert G. Morrison  (Eds.)
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005
By Clifford Morris

Slightly revised on January 14, 2009

©  Clifford Morris, 2009

 A shorter version of the following book review was published in the January -- March 2008 issue, (15(1) 75-79), of Mind, Culture, and Activity.  To see that version, click on the book's front cover image.

I have separated this greater review into sections.  After commenting briefly about the co-editors, I highlight the Handbook's structure. In the next two sections, I list some of the book's virtues and drawbacks. After responding to the Handbook's possible usage as a textbook, I conclude my remarks by summarizing overall. A list of references close out my review.  I will now discuss, in turn, these sections.

The time may now be ripe to review the research behind thinking and reasoning -- two of the more vital higher cognitive processes which drive our brains, our minds and our intelligences. This will not be an easy task as the research so imperative for understanding thinking and reasoning skills are challenging, varied and complex to define, nail down and study. Most simply stated for here, I define reasoning skills as those cognitive processes enabling people to make meaning from information. Likewise, thinking skills are the mental processes needed to arrange ideas into logical patterns. In short, we must to do the best we can with the mental tools that are at our disposal.

Awareness of the research backing up the best usage of thinking and reasoning skills are crucial to a wide range of disciplines, from business to cognitive neuroscience to education and industry. To sponge off of Guilford's (1950) creativity terminology, thinking skills absorb both divergent thinking (the ability to generate many possibilities) and convergent thinking (the ability to focus on the best answer). Whereas divergent thinking uses creative ideas to play "what if" scenarios, convergent thinking enables us to use sound reasoning and common sense. For example, reasoning skills are used to calculate the amount of money needed to purchase houses or cars, decide whether it is safe to invest money in an up-to-the-minute venture or check for inconsistencies in an electoral campaign.

However, despite the importance of thinking and reasoning proficiency for societal success, both editors comment that these areas of cognitive research have been regularly neglected or overlooked as fundamental research topics. Hence, their timely and recent (2005) publication of The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, a brilliant but bulky book chocked-full of 32 specialized chapters covering leading-edge themes in thinking and reasoning with scholarly mastery and insight. This tome, with its encyclopedic coverage of 858 pages, and God-knows-how-many facts can readily be considered the definitive Handbook on both fields of inquiry. Here, Holyoak and Morrison operationally define a handbook as a resource frequently used by researchers as it provides summaries of basic concepts and findings, historical overviews and future directions of different topics by the top researchers in those topic areas. They wanted more than a typical cognitive psychology textbook with chapters on categorization, thinking and reasoning; they felt that such a definitive handbook did not exist. It is their hope that this Handbook fills that void. In my opinion, they have succeeded.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The first editor, Keith J. Holyoak, is a renowned professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has made a number of major contributions to the scientific understanding of human thinking, including his pioneered work on the role that analogy plays in thinking, that is, how analogy serves as a psychological mechanism for learning and transfer of knowledge. Holyoak has published over 170 scientific articles; he is the co-author, editor or co-editor of several books, including Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning and Discovery (MIT Press, 1986), Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought (MIT Press, 1995), The Analogical Mind (MIT Press, 2001), and this Handbook.

The second editor, Robert G. Morrison, is currently the president and partner of Xunesis (http://www.xunesis.org/), a not-for-profit company that encourages individuals to integrate science into their everyday lives. His research includes understanding how the human brain implements and constrains higher cognition. He has worked in molecular biology and chemistry research labs and managed a chemistry research program where his team of researchers was responsible for developing a new polymer technology resulting in several patents. Morrison was first attracted to the study of psychology through his work as a conceptual artist where he developed visual analogies involving identity development and sharing and explored the ways that observers influence the creative process. In psychology, his work has concentrated on human higher cognition and its implications for education.

Structure of the Handbook

Overall, editors Holyoak and Morrison have done a first-rate job of providing the reader with seven informative, well researched and thought provoking themes: The Nature of Human Concepts, Reasoning, Judgment and Decision Making, Problem Solving and Complex Learning, Cognitive and Neural Constraints on Human Thought, Ontology, Phylogeny, Language and Culture, and Thinking in Practice. The Handbook is well integrated for an edited volume. Each theme includes between three to six chapters with every chapter following a comparable organization: an introduction of the topic, a review of the research literature and a Conclusions and Future Directions section. All chapters have something unique to say and yet relates back to the main theme of the Handbook -- comprehending the higher cognitive processes involved when thinking and reasoning.

In the Preface, the editors assert that their intent for producing the Handbook was to overcome the shortcomings of traditional publications on thinking and reasoning, namely, the failure to account for "an accurate handbook for the field of thinking and reasoning -- a book meant to be kept close "at hand" by those involved in the field" (p. ix, quotation marks in original). They sought a book

that would bring together top researchers to write chapters, each of which summarizes the basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketches its history, and provides a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading. This handbook would provide quick overviews for experts in each topic area, and more importantly for experts in allied topic areas (because few researchers can keep up with the scientific literature over the full breadth of the field of thinking and reasoning. Even more crucially, this handbook would provide an entry point into the field for the next generation of researchers by providing a text for use in classes on thinking and reasoning designed for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. (p. ix)

The setting for the handbook is laid out in Chapter 1 (Thinking and Reasoning: A Reader's Guide). Here, the editors introduce us to the subsequent 31 chapters analytically, rather than purely descriptively. They present us with a brief overview of the philosophical underpinnings of modern cognitive psychology, a capsuled history of the development of the field and the use of heuristics (educated guesses or rules of thumb) in decision-making and cognitive neuroscience. They start off by identifying thinking as

"the systematic transformation of mental representations of knowledge to characterize actual or possible states of the world, often in service of goals ... a mental representation of knowledge is an internal description that can be manipulated to form other descriptions. To count as thinking, the manipulations must be systematic transformations governed by certain constraints. (p. 2).

 And later on the same page, they state that reasoning

"paces emphasis on the process of drawing inferences (conclusions) from some initial information (premises). In standard logic, an inference is deductive if the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion by virtue of the argument form. If the truth of the premises renders the truth of the conclusion more credible but does not bestow certainty, the inference is called inductive (p. 2).

Part I deals with foundational matters related to the Nature of Human Concepts. Beginning with Chapter 2 (Similarity), Robert Goldstone and Ji Yun Son review work on the core concept of similarity, that is, how we assess the degree to which events or objects are the same. Douglas Medlin and Lance Rips, the authors of Chapter 3 (Concepts and Categories: Memory, Meaning, and Metaphysics) consider research on categories, how concepts are organized and how relationships are made in semantic memory. Specifically, the authors review ample evidence suggesting that our cataloging, lexical organization and memory organization are amalgamated in semantic memory. Their extensive review of the current literature on this important subject matter is constructive for exploring the responsibility of concepts in semantic memory as well as demonstrating how research findings guide researchers along paths they did not originally foresee. In other words, our daily dealings and our cerebral explorations do not always follow a linear progression but, instead, often become basically a series of twists and turns. And finally, in Chapter 4 (Approaches to Modeling Human Mental Representations: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why), Leonidas Doumas and John Hummel evaluate different computational approaches for modeling mental representations to the representation of relations.

As the title of this section suggests, Part II is all about reasoning. In Chapter 5 (The Problem of Induction), Steven Sloman and David Lagnado set the stage by laying out the issues surrounding induction -- using what is known to generate plausible, although uncertain inferences. In Chapter 6 (Analogy), co-editor Keith Holyoak reviews the literature on reasoning by analogy, an important variety of inductive reasoning that is critical for learning. The most classic aspect of induction is the way in which humans and other creatures acquire knowledge about causal relations, which is critical for predicting the consequences of actions and events. Or to quote the authors "[A]nalogical reasoning is a complex process of retrieving structured knowledge from long-term memory, representing and manipulating role-filler bindings in working memory, performing self-supervised learning to form new inferences, and finding structured intersections between analogs to form new schema" (p. 136).

Marc Buehner and Patricia Cheng use Chapter 7 (Causal Learning) to explain to the reader "the nature of the problem of causal discovery and [to illustrate] the goal of the process with everyday and hypothetical examples" (p. 143). Then, in Chapter 8 (Deductive Reasoning), Jonathan Evans reviews work on the psychology of deductive reasoning, the form of thinking with the closest ties to logic. In Chapter 9 (Mental Models and Thought), P. N. Johnson-Laird describes the work that he and others have performed using the framework of mental models to deal with various reasoning tasks, both deductive and inductive. Mental models have close connections to perceptual representations that are visuospatial. And in Chapter 10 (Visuospatial Reasoning), Barbara Tversky reviews work on the role of visuospatial representations in thinking. In summary, these six chapters review how individuals construct plausible inferences, bring into play analogies and learn and establish causal relations, engage in inductive and deductive reasoning and use visuospatial images in thought.

The editors make use of Part III, Judgment and Decision Making, to comment on the cognitive structures that we utilize to process social information are activated and used. Throughout three chapters, they introduce the reader to models of heuristical thinking (or educated guesses) and how motivation and emotion influence our decision-making process. They go on to comment that the consequences of many of our daily decisions are trivial; we barely consider different courses of action. Sometimes the price tags are great as we think carefully about potential options and weigh the costs and benefits of each possible response. Sometimes, however, such decisions are completed almost intuitively.

For example, how many of us, however, have stopped to fully consider the science of decision making? The science of decision making asks some of the following questions: What factors influence judgments and decisions? Why do we question decisions after we have made them?  To cite a personal and most recent circumstance, was it a fine decision for this retired public school teacher to spend hours reading, understanding and writing this review? On a wider level, how can we reduce bias in our judgments and conclusions? The answers to these and many other questions can be found in Chapter 11 (Decision Making) as authored by Robyn LeBoeuf and Eldar Shafir. Then, in Chapter 12 (A Model of Heuristic Judgment), Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick present an overarching model of heuristic judgment. They define heuristics "as a collection of disparate cognitive procedures, related only by their common function in a particular judgmental domain-choice under uncertainty" (p. 287). Finally, in Chapter 13 (Motivated Thinking), Daniel Molden and Tory Higgins review research revealing the ways in which human motivation and emotion influence ways of thinking. In doing so, they underscore a current dilemma in psychology. As the field of psychology has expanded and the fields of investigation have become more focused, links between different areas of psychological exploration have often been missing. The authors note that this is the case in regard to drives, motives and information processing. In short, the deliberations behind outcome-motivated thinking provides an excellent interface between motivation and cognition.

The heart of the handbook lies in Part IV, in its core five chapters (14-18), chapters that deal with the current research on problem solving and similar issues and how we learn in problem solving situations. In Chapter 14 (Problem Solving), Laura Novick and Miriam Bassok present a general overview of the field of human problem solving as they examine how all of us attempt to solve problems. This chapter is particularly successful in providing thoughtful interpretations about the state of such research. Due to the magnitude of how we continuously struggle to solve societal problems, a brief digression is in order here.

How we reason, think and solve problems has been the subject of research in cognitive psychology for countless years. Using the results of a wide range of research projects, Newell and Simon (1972) initially developed a model to characterize the nature of problems, and how we solve them. Newell and Simon argued that their model was capable of being used to characterize all problems we encounter and attempt to solve. Despite its age, the Newell and Simon Model is still regarded as the starting point for research in problem-solving. They held that all problems occurred within what they described in psychological terms as a problem space. This problem space contained three problem elements: a problem state, a search space and a goal state. The problem state was taken to be the clear descriptor from which problem-solving commences and was represented in their model by a single, defined point, indicating that the starting point of problems can be characterized by one clear descriptor. They described their search space as the information space from which all procedures (actions or strategies) that was needed to be taken to reach the goal state. Finally, the goal state was deemed to the end point of problem-solving.

In Chapter 15 (Creativity), Sternberg, Lubart, Kaufman and Pretz provide the reader with a basic awareness of the literature on creativity as they examined alternative approaches to understanding this intriguing yet elusive subject. In my opinion, part of the challenge in coming to terms with creativity is definitional. Is a design that is innovative to one yet widespread knowledge to the population truly creative? Should the term creativity be put to one side for original ideas or productions that transform our vision of the world? These and other questions are well-answered by the chapter's four authors. A reader informed of the current literature related to creativity will be excited by the many approaches (pragmatic, psychodynamic, psychological and cognitive) that the authors thrash out.

For a more comprehensive overview, the reader unfamiliar with the creativity literature might better benefit by first reading Piirto's (2004) Understanding Creativity as well as MacKinnon's (1962) article The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent. In Chapter 16 (Complex Declarative Learning), Michelen Chi and Stellan Ohlsson review how knowledge is sometimes restructured to enhance understanding. In Chapter 17 (Thinking as a Production System),  Marsha Lovett and John Anderson review work on thinking that is based on a particular formal approach rooted in work on problem solving, namely, production systems. Some of the research information in this chapter may be too arcane for beginning students. And finally, in Chapter 18 (Implicit Cognition and Thought), Leib Litman and Arthur  research suggesting that some aspects of thinking and learning depend on implicit mechanisms that operate largely outside of awareness. Restated in another way, they indicate that some of what we learn and think during problem-solving situations occurs outside of our own awareness. Thinking and reasoning imply conscious effort; however, here the authors suggests that this is not always the case. This final chapter in this section, hence, becomes an excellent catalyst into additional research and discussion involving the role of consciousness in thinking.

A review of the research in Part V, Cognitive and Neural Constraints on Human Thought, suggests that "[h]igh-level human thinking cannot be fully understood in isolation from fundamental cognitive processes and their neural substrates" (p. 6). In Chapter 19 (Thinking in Working Memory), co-editor Robert Morrison reviews the wealth of evidence indicating that thinking and reasoning depend critically on what is known as “working memory,” that is, the system responsible for short-term upkeep and handling of information. Current work is making headway in linking thought processes to specific brain structures such as the prefrontal cortex.

Morrison's research is indeed interesting as he provides a brief yet fairly complete history of working memory as it developed from multiple store models of memory. He puts forth different definitions of working memory. The comparison of two models, the four-component working memory model by Baddeley and the embedded-processes model by Cowan is important for students and researchers to consider since cognitive psychology texts generally present the Baddeley model as if there were no alternative accounts of working memory. In addition, the review of research related to syllogistic reasoning, working memory and recent structural equation modeling research helps validate the construct of working memory. In Chapter 20 (Cognitive Neuroscience of Deductive Reasoning), author Vinod Goel discusses the key topic of deductive reasoning in relation to its neural substrate. Brain disorders, notably schizophrenia, produce striking disruptions of normal thought processes, which can shed light on how thinking takes place in normal brains.. In Chapter 21 (Cognitive and Neuroscience Aspects of Thought Disorder), Peter Bachman and Tyrone Cannon) discuss how disorganized thoughts can result in abnormal speech.

In Part VI, Ontogeny, Phylogeny, Language, and Culture, the reader is exposed to six chapters whereby researchers discuss developmental, comparative and cultural research on reasoning and thinking. In Chapter 22 (Development of Thinking), Graeme Halford  provides an overview of the development of thinking and reasoning during the childhood years. In Chapter 23 (Mathematical Cognition), Randy Gallistel and Rochel Gelman discuss mathematical thinking, a special form of rudimentary math skills, such as numerical estimation (e.g., quantity of time) that exist in nonhuman animals and develop in children.

In Chapter 24 (Effects of Aging on Reasoning), Timothy Salthouse describes the changes in thinking and reasoning brought about by the aging process. As much less has been written about the encouraging potential of the mature brain, I present here a more positive version. With my excitement of growing older, I was somewhat disappointed to read Salthouse's overall message -- that aging affects brain structures and function in apparently only deleterious ways. For the aging reader particularly (I guess that this means all of us), this pervasive conclusion tends to be most depressing. My initial reaction was to pose the following two intriguing questions: doesn't anything good come of aging regarding brain structure and cognitive function? What about the variety of varied experiences, intelligences and learning so that characteristic of the wiser older adult? Personal whining aside, the 17 pages of this chapter offered little or no focus on such positives. For example, in summarizing the schemas in activational imaging, Salthouse indicated that aging people's brains may be less active in the prefrontal cortex than younger people's, but they also may be more active. In the former instance, the outcome is interpreted as a sign of deterioration either in the neuropil or white matter. In the latter instances, the outcome is seen as demonstrating that the aging brain must recruit more neurons to process the tasks that younger brains accomplish with fewer cells. Granted, the data cannot or should not be tortured simply to make aging readers better. However, it would have been nice to have read occasionally that the result of decades of learning and experience on the aging skills of reasoning and thinking may result in some small neurocognitive strengths.

Unconvinced with Salthouse's depressing inferences and coupled by constantly being brainwashed by government controlled media, I sought out, for this review, research fostering a more positive approach, perhaps something fostering Cicero's elucidation some 2,000 years earlier in his De Senectute -- that later life could be one of vitality and activity. First, I studied Gene Cohen's 2005 The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain, wherein he suggests the following four novel stages of psychological development during our later years of life: new brain cells do form throughout life, our brain is continually resculpting itself in response to experience and learning, our brain's emotional circuitry matures and becomes more balanced with age and our brain's two hemispheres are more equally used by older adults. Equally revealing was reading that Cohen conceptualizes the aging process as neither a period involving deterioration of the mind and body nor as a phase of life characterized by an attempt to minimize inevitable decline (for a similar viewpoint, see Rowe & Kahn, 1998). Rather, living as an older adult is presented as a time for potential new direction involving intellectual development, creative growth and blossoming social relationships. Drawing on his clinical experience, Cohen discusses a fluid and dynamic approach to the aging process that involves acquisition of advanced forms of thinking and reasoning that can be attained only from years of life experience. Moreover, Cohen shares anecdotal accounts drawn from his personal interactions with family members and patients.

In Chapter 25 (Reasoning and Thinking in Nonhuman Primates), Joseph Call and Michael Tomasello review the comparative literature on how monkeys and apes think and reason. In Chapter 26 (Language and Thought), Lila Gleitman and Anna Papafragou review the hypotheses and evidence concerning the connections between language and thought. This chapter is centered on an intriguing question, namely, does thinking influence language, or does language influence thinking? This chapter is engaging and would represent an excellent starting point for a class discussion on language development and thinking. And finally, in Chapter 27, Greenfield considers the ways in which modes of thinking may vary in the context of different human cultures.

In Part VII, Thinking in Practice, the final section of the Handbook, nine authors brings together variations in thinking and reasoning across fields and across individuals within a culture. Here, the reader is perhaps exposed to the most practical implications of thinking and reasoning. In Chapter 28 (Legal Reasoning), Phoebe Ellsworth reviews what is known about thinking in the field of law. In Chapter 29 (Scientific Thinking and Reasoning), Kevin Dunbar and Johathan Fugelsang discuss thinking and reasoning as manifested in the practice of science. In Chapter 30 (Thinking and Reasoning in Medicine), Vimla Patel, Jose Arocha and Jiajie Zhang discuss reasoning in the field of medicine -- in which accurate diagnosis and treatment are literally everyday matters of life and death. Then, in Chapter 31 (Intelligence), Robert Jeffrey Sternberg comments on how individual differences in thinking and reasoning can be associated with the nature of intelligence. The unique strength of this chapter is its author as Mr. Sternberg has written or edited over 800 publications, including at least a dozen major books on the various issues of the nature of human intelligences. He is unquestionably a significant specialist on this subject matter. The more interested reader can see a list of his major works at (http://www.igs.net/~cmorris/Sternberg.html).

Chapter 32 (Learning to Think: The Challenges of Teaching Thinking) is the final chapter of the Handbook. Here, Ron Ritchhart and David Perkins review one of the major struggles for education -- discovering better ways to teach others how to think more effectively. My criticism here is that many of the "Conclusions and Future Directions" chapter areas would have been better positioned in various and earlier book chapters as it is constructive in developing a comprehensive understanding of some of the practical implications, including areas for additional research. Restated slightly differently, integrating these final five chapters into the conceptualization of reasoning and thinking for readers, particularly practicing classroom instructors would have made the book even more powerful. I base this comment on years of experience as a classroom instructor, school principal and educational researcher.

Strengths of the Handbook

So what is my overall reaction to the Handbook? Well, I have several mixed feelings. As to its major-league strengths, this book has many ... but couched with minor-league hesitations here and there. Immediately below, I start off with the positives, commenting on why I feel that this Handbook is an important read. Following that, I list a series of minor limitation that, if implemented, would, beyond doubt, enhanced the Handbook. In addition to comments mentioned elsewhere, I feel that this is an important Handbook for the following six reasons.

One, the key and most attractive word in the book's title is Handbook, in that this volume is truly a Handbook in every sense of the word. Holyoak and Morrison bring together a stellar group of researchers who provide excellent overviews of the historical development of research on a wide range of topics related to thinking and reasoning, update the literature providing state-of-the-art insights, identify and clarify key unresolved issues in the field and offer a wealth of ideas for future research. All of the chapters are directly related to either thinking or reasoning, in one way or another. The chapter authors have well integrated their contents into a coherent whole and are fully aware of the contributions of (most of) the other chapter authors. As an aside, publishers seem to be increasingly supporting this written expression, knowing that more and more budget-conscious libraries are shifting from hard-copy to electronic sources and trying to cut costs by foregoing edited books in favor of handbooks for their reference shelves. This handbook offers its reader such a type of consistent approach. And the fact that this volume does not put forth an oversimplified prescription for treating thinking and reasoning is perhaps one of its major strength.

Two, another strength of the Handbook lies is its added application as a research guidebook. Once in a while books that fail predominantly as main textbooks still have significant value as reference books or guidebooks for exclusive topics. This volume does address that possibility as it is a worthwhile read cover to cover for all practicing cognitive scientists, graduate students in neuroscience and university instructors. Although both editors market the Handbook as a textbook,  I feel that their volume is of equal value as a sourcebook for those who already have some basic understanding of thinking and reasoning skills but who want to address specific gaps in their knowledge. In the opening chapter, the editors nicely summarize this when they state

This volume offers a comprehensive treatment of higher cognition. As such, it serves as an excellent source for courses on thinking and reasoning, both at the graduate level and for upper-level undergraduates ... there are a number of other possibilities including using chapters from this volume as introductions for various topics and then supplementing with readings from the prime literature. (p. 7)

Aside from some technical quibbling, I think that both editors have succeeded in this goal. I would recommend the Handbook to a colleague or to a student who, like many of us, did not learn everything they needed to know the first (or 27th) time through cognitive science material. Often specific chapters of the Handbook could be extremely useful for applied researchers who already know a lot about theories of mind but who have important gaps in their knowledge. Here are some possible examples. Chapter 21 (Cognitive and Neuroscience Aspects of Thought Disorder) could be assigned in abnormal psychology, Chapter 22 (Development and Thinking) and Chapter 24 (Effects of Aging on Reasoning) in developmental psychology, Chapter 27 (Paradigms of Cultural Thought) in cross-cultural psychology, Chapter 29 (Scientific Thinking and Reasoning) could be assigned in Research Methods, and finally, Chapter 30 (Thinking and Reasoning in Medicine) could be quite useful in health psychology.

A third strong point is that all of the chapters of the Handbook are self-contained. They are not organized in a progressive order and they do not rely on each other for comprehension. Major concepts dealt with in multiple chapters are noted by chapter authors to ease cross-referencing between chapters. Or to cite both editors exactly:

In preparing this handbook, we also had our moment of "insight." It came when all these outstanding researchers agreed to join our project. Before the first chapter was drafted, we knew the volume was going to be of the highest quality. Along the way, our distinguished authors graciously served as each other's critics as we passed drafts around, working to make the chapters as integrated as integrated as possible, adding in pointers from one to another. Then the authors all changed hats again and went back to work revising their own chapters in light of the feedback their peers had provided. (p x, quotation marks in original)

Furthermore, all chapters are extremely well referenced and serve as first-rate bibliographic resources. Apart from the book's first chapter (Thinking and Reasoning: A Reader's Guide), chapter lengths vary between 13 and 27 pages, apart from references. The average chapter length is 20 pages, again excluding references. The number of references per chapters fluctuate between 33 and 219 with a mean of about 125 references per chapter. The final 56 pages of the volume contain both an extensive Author and Subject Index. Throughout the well written and well referenced chapters, 53 contributors provide the reader with a wealth of material from which to answer the following intriguing questions: What is reasoning? What is thinking? How do these mental models change developmentally across cultures? How do these cerebral capacities change developmentally across the course of history? How do these cognitive competencies change developmentally during the course of one's life span? How do such logical capabilities differ from other constructs, for example, expertise and intelligences? Is there a relationship between reasoning and thinking skills, and, if so, what is the affiliation? and Can interventions be designed to increase the development of our thinking and reasoning skills?

The key to the researcher is that these chapter reviews are not only comprehensive but succinct. Effective use of subtitling also increases the ease with which information can be found within chapters. Finally, and as already mentioned, the Conclusions and Future Directions sections at the close of each chapter provide a synopsis of research findings, highlight limitations in the research literature, and speculate on productive areas for future research. In short, the chapters are a valuable resource to both the expert performer (see Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich & Hoffman, 2006; see especially Ross, 2006) and to the novice researcher.

A fourth strength is that, throughout, the authors present conflicting results when available. Readers are thus exposed to both confirmatory and contradictory research evidence. Moreover, the conversational and personal tone of the narrative engages the reader.

A fifth strength of the Handbook is that each of the seven areas encompass a theme that could stand alone; the chapters do not have to be read in sequence. In other words, when only some of the book's topics are a focus of attention, the reader can just read the chapters on the subjects of interest and skip the rest of the book.

A sixth and final plus of the handbook is that all of the contributors presents their area of expertise while at the same time making it clear why reasoning and thinking is important to their area. To cite just one situation from numerous examples displayed throughout the book, while discussing the psychological construct Intelligence, Sternberg (Chapter 31) successfully argued that many highly competent individuals are deemed incompetent because they are doing well in areas not assessed by typical measures of success.

Weaknesses of the Handbook

I have yet to read a handbook that is comprehensive and as is the case with most first editions, this volume is no exception. But to be fair to the editors and authors, in a book that covers as much information as this one does, it is always possible to find minor things to quibble about. But all of my following limitations are minor. While the book is rather thick and comprehensive, it took me a bit of work to find topics that I might have covered but which they did not. In other words, the handbook contains it share of caveats which could have made the Handbook better. Here then are eight of the more obvious weaknesses that I detected.

One, perhaps the most surprising fault of all is that the editor failed to include a chapter discussing the affective and emotional influences on reasoning. In Chapter 13 (Motivated Thinking), authors Daniel Molden and Tory Higgins do comment re this deletion in their opening note (see p. 312), and defend their omission (as well as a few others) by emphasizing that "the topic of affect and cognition has recently been the subject of several entire handbooks on [their] own" (p. 312). However, I was not convinced. Such a volume on thinking and reasoning should discuss, somewhat, emotional and affective influences on reasoning, in their own right.

Two, another of my concerns lie within one of the most unsatisfying chapters in the book, Chapter 22 (Development of Thinking). Here, author Graeme Halford allocates scarce space to the concept of mental modularity, primarily advanced by the philosopher Jerry Fodor (1983). At the outset of the chapter, Halford states that "[i]t is appropriate to begin a review of research on cognitive development with the work of pioneering researchers such as Luria, Piaget, and Vygotsky, who provided much of the conceptual foundation on which later contributions were built" (p. 529). In a chapter sub-section titled Domain Specificity versus Generality, Halford comments briefly when he says that "many cognitive processes are performed by specialized modules" (p. 541). Why did Halford stop there? Why was there no Fodorian (innate modular devices parsing different types of) information included? Such brief attention is insufficient because during most of the 20th century, scores of conventional psychologists adhered to the blank slate theory of the mind (Pinker, 2001, 2002) -- at birth, the mind resembles a blank slate, devoid of content and possesses little, if any, innate structure. Or to quote Fodor (1998) directly:

The human mind is a blank slate at birth. Experience writes on the slate, and association extracts and extrapolates whatever trends there are in the record that experience leaves. The structure of the mind is thus an image, made a posteriori, of the statistical regularities in the world in which it finds itself. I would guess that quite a substantial majority of cognitive scientists believe something of this sort; so deeply, indeed, that many hardly notice that they do.

To continue my critique, Fodor's (1985, 2000) hypothesis, simply summarized for here, is that our mind partitions cerebral resources into an arrangement of instinctive sensory modules that lead into a general purpose central processor responsible for thinking and decision making. Indeed, the defining features of such sensory modules are threefold: One, is that they are dedicated to processing a proscribed range of input (e.g., the vision module administers data from light falling on the retinas), two, that their processing is rapid and compulsory (e.g., we see with no conscious force, and visual illusions remain convincing even when we consciously know they are misapprehensions, and third, and what I believe to be the most significant point is that these inborn sensory modules are informationally encapsulated from each other and from the central processor. In other words, these modules have no connections with each other and that the central processor has no control over any of the modules). In my opinion, the primary issue in the mental architecture of the human mind is the proper construal of modularity.

Three, purists may take issue with the degree of overlap between three of the six chapters in Part II (Reasoning). Inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning are examined in Chapter 5 (The Problem of Induction), in Chapter 8 (Deductive Reasoning) and again in Chapter 9 (Mental Models and Thought), making these chapters, to some extent, cyclical. However, in all fairness to the two co-editors, strengths of edited handbooks sometimes double as weaknesses. That is, the duplication of content and repetitive overlap across chapters is the price paid for having several experts inform on the state of a scientific topics as complex as human reasoning and thinking. Although some duplication is present here, the true extent is minimal in comparison with many other edited tomes and is here easily tolerated because of the substantive subject matter. Perhaps a bigger weakness rests in the lack of integration among the chapters. At times, I sensed that the various chapter authors were somewhat unaware of or attended to the content of other chapters. Targeted cross-referencing often is the signal of a final editing process that ties everything together.

Four, another drawback can be found throughout Timothy Salthouse's Chapter 24 (Effects of Aging on Reasoning), particularly in his description of the changes in thinking and reasoning brought about by the aging process. With the number of older adults aged 65 and over expected to increase from 35 million in 2000 to an estimated 71 million in 2030 in the United States -- roughly 20 percent of the population (cf. Kinsella & Velkoff, 2001) -- the concern for how to provide the necessary resources is upon all of us. Conventional literature on this topic suggests that all of us dread the thought of ever getting old. This allegedly universal fear is not novel. For centuries, explorers sought ad infinitum for a fountain of youth, which was thought to keep all who drank its waters forever fresh. Today, reducing the effects of physical aging is a lucrative business. Commercially available products such as body lotions, facial moisturizers, makeup, hair coloring, vitamins and exercise equipment, to name just some, include marketing claims that promise to slow the aging process or, at a minimum, make it overtly appear slower. Numerous surgical procedures exist and continue to be developed to assist people with removing the unwanted signs of the "older adult" years. These examples illustrate my concern with the perceived problems of old age and the lengths to which many of us are willing to go to retain the benefits of being young. I am not one of them as I have a relatively positive perspective on aging.

On the basis of the findings of his own groundbreaking research, Cohen presents retirement not as a negative concept characterized by boredom and deterioration but as a new phase of life filled with seemingly boundless opportunities for positive growth heretofore unavailable owing to time constraints associated with occupational responsibilities. In the context of providing a realistic but more optimistic perspective of aging, Cohen presents an excellent overview, in easy-to-read language, of contemporary and important research in the fields of developmental neuroscience. Consider that it was not until relatively recently that scientists viewed most aspects of human brain development to be complete by late childhood or adolescence and then essentially static after this time (Kolb & Wishaw, 2006).

To conclude this rant on the positive side of aging, the generally accepted (Salthouse) stance was also that after a given age, speculated to be during adolescence or early adulthood, brain cells, once damaged, were incapable of healing, and the brain was unable to produce new cells to take their place. Although many of the theoretical contentions presented by Cohen, such as the concept of an “Inner Push” consisting of internal drives that fuel development and provide energy for positive change, have not yes been subjected to sufficient empirical investigation, they are presented, as noted previously, in conjunction with anecdotal cases and in parallel with lines of research that offer indirect evidence for their existence. Such an approach lends credibility to these assertions and provides a basis for potentially new and exciting avenues for future study. During the past two decades, research in the neurosciences has revealed that these and many other previously held views are false. It has now been established that the learning skills behind reasoning and thinking result in physical changes within the structures of the brain not only during childhood and adolescence but throughout our entire life span. Perchance then, aging as a time of decay is little more than a myth!  In addition, the increased architectural complexity within the brain secondary to enriched environmental stimulation also manifests in a form of cognitive reserve that acts as a protective mechanism against injury and disease (cf. Kolb & Whishaw, 2006; to read additional encouraging viewpoints on the aging process, see Lazarus & Lazarus, 2006: Morley & van den Berg, 2000; see especially Schaie & Willis, 1996).

Five, still others might take issue with this concern: that this tome fails to include a series of chapter appendices or glossaries of key terms. These do not appear in this volume, nor are their absences explained. Descriptions of research in a field such as cognitive psychology / cognitive science / cognitive neuroscience can easily result in jargon overload for the novice reader. A glossary of major terms would have been welcomed at the end of the Handbook and might go a long way to assist that mythical intelligent but nonprofessional reader. As well, a series of appendices for the more interested reader who would like to develop deeper insight into the research within the fields of thinking and reasoning would add to the value of the Handbook. Other possible appendices could include addresses, related books, contact numbers, web (URL) addresses and email and short summaries of a host of agencies and organizations focused on ongoing research on thinking and reasoning.

Six, a topic left out of Holyoak and Morrison's otherwise well-argued line of reasoning, is not so much a criticism as a wish for inclusion to the second edition. In Part III (Judgment and Decision Making), it would have been nice to see more discussion on Critical Thinking. That a handbook dealing with thinking and reasoning fails to includes within its Subject Index (pp. 831-858) a single item on critical thinking is inexcusable! Until then, the current Handbook is worth the effort, but those interested in this key construct will need to dig through a fair amount of similar such Handbooks. In the interim and to fill somewhat this void, I would suggest that the more interested reader commence with Kenneth Hawes's (1990) informative chapter Understanding Critical Thinking. It is a generally agreed upon that critical thinking is of large importance in everyone's social success and that it involves the reasoned evaluation of what to do and/or to believe.  This includes always asking questions, not being “gullible” as one steers toward a final decision (product) and not taking things at face value.

Seven, this remark is not so much a critique of the Handbook as it is an idea for (possible) inclusion into the next edition. My remarks here stem from reading three recent books: Michael Cole, Karl Levitin and Alexander Luria's (2005) The Autobiography of Alexander Luria: A Dialogue with The Making of Mind, Jay Friedenberg and Gordon Silverman's (2006) Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of the Mind and Andy Field's (2005). Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (2nd ed.).

All three books included numerous ancillaries to promote their more effective usage. In the Autobiography, Cole and Levitin included a DVD consisting of a series of interviews from prominent scholars who knew and worked closely with Alexander Romanovich Luria (http://www.igs.net/~cmorris/luria.html). The editors also invited readers to consult their website (http://luria.ucsd.edu/), especially constructed to accompany their book. In Cognitive Science, Friedenberg and Silverman generated a companion website (http://www.sagepub.com/CSstudy/) featuring online student-friendly exercises, E-flash cards, interactive quizzes, an instructors’ CD-ROM with a test bank, chapter outlines, PowerPoint slides, a sample syllabus and ideas for student projects. And in Discovering Statistics, Andy Field included a companion CD containing a wealth of SPSS data sets from the textbook examples, answers to the end-of-chapter learning exercises (Smart Alex's Tasks), a power calculation program, and several appendixes covering more advanced topics. As well, his companion web site (http://www.sagepub.co.uk/field/) contains additional student resources (e-flashcards, additional student questions) and instructor resources (test bank, PowerPoint slides) available to those who adopt the book as a course text. Taken together, I felt that those supplementary references greatly enhanced the overall quality of all three books. Perchance Holyoak and Morrison might consider incorporating such similar additions into their next printing or edition.

My eighth and final critique is that the editors failed to detect a number of proofreading slip-ups. Here are a few of the copyediting errors that slipped through the cracks. First, at the end of the left-hand column of page 6, the final six lines read: Mental models have close connections to perceptual representations that are visuospatial in Chapter 10, Barbara Twersky reviews work on the role of visuospatial representations in thinking. I believe that that those lines should read as: Mental models have close connections to perceptual representations that are visuospatial. In Chapter 10, Barbara Twersky reviews work on the role of visuospatial representations in thinking. A second slip occurs on page 791. The "Brown, Ferrera, Champoine 1983" citation (in the left-hand column) failed to match the "Brown, Bransford, Ferrera, Champoine, 1983" reference (see p. 797). And in the same citation cluster, the "Bruer, 1993" citation contained no reference (see p. 797). And finally, on page 793, the "Roth, 1995" citation does not match the "Roth, W.-M. B., Michael, G. (1995)" reference on page 801.

Could the Handbook be used as a Textbook?

Just because Holyoak and Morrison state that "instructors for semester-length graduate courses in thinking and reasoning may opt to assign the entire volume as a textbook" (p. 7), this does not mean that the Handbook can only be used for that reason. Not surprisingly, authors, editors and publishers have an interest in pitching their manuscripts as curriculum textbooks in the hope that thousands of undergraduates will purchase their product every semester. I was thus equally pleased to see that Holyoak and Morrison also wrote their book at a level equally appropriate for master's and doctoral-level students, as it is critically important for students conducting thesis and dissertation work to understand the objectives of systematic reviews.

After examining the names of the chapter authors, a knowledgeable researcher would expect nothing save a book of the highest quality. Could such a forte be construed as one of the most serious predicaments of The Handbook, in that many of the chapters are quite technical requiring readers to be well-versed in the research literature and different theories represented in the volume? Fortunately, the more advanced researcher will not be disappointed even given the lofty goals and high expectations for the content and delivery of the material to be covered. For those with such advanced knowledge, The Handbook is a must-have book, precisely because it brings together theory and research over so much of cognitive science ... conversely, outsiders will be hard-pressed to follow various chapter arguments.

Such graduate-level students could read this book with profit because it raises issues that span the broad discipline of cognitive science. As well as the editor's first-rate "examples of possible chapter groupings tailored to a variety of possible course offerings" (p. 7), the Handbook could function in a variety of other instructional ways at the undergraduate levels as well as an appropriate reference for doctoral-level coursework. For example, in Chapter 1 (Thinking and Reasoning: A Reader's Guide), the editors put forward a number of possible chapter assignments for different undergraduate and graduate courses, including Introduction to Thinking and Reasoning, Development of Thinking, Modeling Human Thought, Applied Thought, and Differences in Thought (pp. 7-8). In these examples, the Handbook could possibly function as a principal text.

In addition to what the editors suggest, added chapters that I would also consider appropriate for introductory courses include Goldstone and Son's Chapter 2 on similarity, Medin and  Rips's Chapter 3 on categories and concepts , Holyoak's Chapter 6 on analogy, LeBoeuf and Shafir's Chapter 11 on decision making, Kahneman and Frederick's Chapter 12 on heuristic judgment as well as Patricia Greenfield's Chapter 27 on paradigms of cultural thought, to name but a few. More advanced students would benefit from Leonidas and Doumas and Hummel's Chapter 4 on approaches to modeling human mental representations: what works, what doesn't and why, Sloman and Lagnado's Chapter 5 on the problem of induction, Molden and Higgins's Chapter 13 on motivated thinking, Novick and Bassok's Chapter 14 on problem solving, Litman and Reber's Chapter 18 on implicit cognition and thought, Goel's Chapter 20 on cognitive neuroscience of deductive reasoning, Salthouse's Chapter 24 on effects of aging on reasoning, Gleitman and Papafragou's Chapter 26 on language and thought, Patel, Arocha and Zhang's Chapter 30 on reasoning in medicine.

Conclusion

In sum, The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is no svelte volume for neophytes who desire quick knowledge of the research behind thinking or reasoning skills. Because the volume traverses territory from various forms of higher cognition and cognitive science to the most recent advances in cognitive neuroscience, this Handbook demands extensive background knowledge and motivation on the part of the reader. Both editors sought after a work that would bring together top researchers to generate chapters summarizing the basic concepts and findings for two major topics, sketch their histories and provide a sense of directions in which research is currently heading. Moreover, they wanted to put together a book that could be used by those working in the fields of thinking and reasoning. They have achieved their goal. The chapter authors are impressive, composed of leading experts within particular areas of specialization in the fields of thinking and reasoning. The final section of the handbook includes works related to developmental, social and clinical psychology, philosophy, economics, artificial intelligence, linguistics, education, law and medicine.

While this tome boasts a few rough edges, my paperback copy was an interesting, thought provoking and well-written digest. It is always arrogant to predict the future but my speculation is that this book will have made an enduring contribution to the field of cognitive science. Is the Handbook worth reading? The answer is a resounding yes! Holyoak and Morrison offer a well developed summary of the major theoretical disciplines involved with reasoning and thinking. Moreover, all of their contributors put forward an excellent comparative overview of the current research on thinking and reasoning. This heavy Handbook has much to offer to many, something that similar books in the cognitive science field do not. Its contents are well argued, wide ranging, up-to-date, well written and with contributions from leading researchers in the areas of thinking and reasoning. And most notably, writings across all chapters are consistent and of very high quality.  So, for those of you who are reading this review to make a decision to buy or use this Handbook, by all means go out, spend the money to this book. It will not be available as a used book because those who buy it will not want to part with it.

This serious volume will also prove to be of immense practical value for those graduate students already pursuing cognitive studies and a book that I consider should become essential reading for anyone new to the field of cognitive neuroscience. Would the Handbook be a good addition to one's personal library? Definitely yes! The list of 53 contributors reads like a “Who's Who” of key researchers in thinking and reasoning: Robert Jeffrey Sternberg on creativity and human intelligences, Philip Johnson-Laird on mental models, Keith Holyoak on analogies, David Perkins on the teaching of thinking skills, and so forth. Put simply, the contributors to the Handbook are among the most prominent figures in their respective fields and their expertise is well displayed in the quality and quantity of their respective chapters.

Throughout, the Handbook's numerous authors remind the reader that one of the most important skills of the social science researcher is the ability to reason clearly and to think efficiently. While we are a long way from a unified theory of the mind, especially within the domains of reasoning and thinking, nonetheless, this work represents a valuable compendium of the current state of knowledge about both fields of research. The resulting format is a thought-provoking presentation that is informative, interesting and noteworthy. The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is truly a worthwhile read, and the conscientious reader will be more knowledgeable if not wiser.

References

Cohen, D. G.  (2005).  The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain, New York: Basic Books.

Cole, M., Levitin, K., & Luria, A. L.  (2005).  The Autobiography of Alexander Luria  A Dialogue with The Making of Mind. New Jersey:  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Reviewed at (http://www.igs.net/~cmorris/review_the_making_of_mind.htm).

Ericsson, K. Anders, Charness, Neil, Feltovich, Paul,  J., Hoffman, Robert, R. (Eds.)  (2006, June).  The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Field, A.  (2005).  Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (2nd ed.).  London: Sage Publications.

Fodor, J.  (1983).  Modularity of mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fodor, J.  (1985, March).  Précis of the modularity of mind. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8(1), 1-42.

Fodor, J.  (1998, January 15).  The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism [Review of How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker and Evolution in Mind by Henry Plotkin]. London Review of Books, 20(2)  Retrieved September 11, 2006, from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n02/fodo01_.html

Fodor, J.  (2000).  The mind doesn't work that way: The scope and limits of computational psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Friedenberg, Jay & Silverman, Gordon  (2006).  Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of the Mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Gentner, D., Holyoak, K. J., & Kokinov, B. N. (Eds.)  (2001).  The analogical mind: Perspectives from cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Guilford, J.P.  (1950). Creativity. American Psychologist, 5, 444-454.

Hawes, K.  (1990).  Understanding Critical Thinking. In V. A. Howard, (Ed.), Varieties of Thing: Essays from Harvard's Philosophy of Education Research Center  (pp.47-61).  London: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, Inc.

Holland, J. H., Holyoak, K. J., Nisbett, R. E., & Thagard, P. (1986).  Induction: Processes of inference, learning, and discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Holyoak, K. J., & Thagard, P.  (1995).  Mental leaps: Analogy in creative thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Japanese translation, 1998.

Kinsella, K., & Velkoff, V. A.  (2001).  An aging world: 2001 (U. S. Census Bureau, Series P95/01-1). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Kolb, B., & Whishaw, I. Q.  (2006).  An introduction to brain and behavior (2nd ed.). New York: Worth.

Lazarus, Richard S., & Lazarus, Bernice N.  (2006).  Coping With Aging. New York: Oxford University Press.

MacKinnon, D. W.  (1962).  The nature and nurture of creative talent. American Psychologist, 17, 484-495.

Morley, J. E., & van den Berg, L. (Eds.).  (2000).  Contemporary endocrinology (No. 20). Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

Newell, A., & Simon, H.  A.  (1972).  Human problem solving. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Piirto, J.  (2004).  Understanding creativity. Scottsdale, AZ: Gifted Potential Press.

Pinker, S.  (1997).  How the mind works. New York: Norton.

Pinker, S.  (2002).  The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking.

Ross, Philip, E.  (2006, August).  The Expert Mind  [Special Issue].  Scientific American, 295(2), 64-71.

Rowe, J. W., & Kahn, R. L.  (1998).  Successful aging. New York: Pantheon Books.

Schaie, K. W., & Willis, S. L.  (1996).  Adult development and aging (4th ed.). New York: HarperCollins.

Sternberg material may be found at: http://www.igs.net/~cmorris/Sternberg.html

 

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