Cognitive Science is an avowedly multidisciplinary field, drawing upon many traditional disciplines or research areas—including Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, Artificial Intelligence, and Education—that contribute to our understanding of cognition. Just as learning and memory cannot truly prove effective as disconnected studies, practical applications of cognitive research, such as the improvement of education and human-computer interaction, require dealing with more complex cognitive phenomena by integrating the methods and insights from multiple traditional disciplines. The societal need for such applications has played an important role in the development of cognitive science.
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Science emphasizes the research and theory that is most central to modern cognitive science. Sections of the volume address computational theories of human cognitive architecture; cognitive functioning, such as problem solving and decision making as they have been studied with both experimental methods and formal modeling approaches; and cognitive linguistics and the advent of big data. Chapters provide concise introductions to the present achievements of cognitive science, supplemented by references to suggested reading, and additional facets of cognitive science are discussed in the handbook's introductory chapter, complementing other key publications to access for further study. With contributions from among the best representatives in their fields, this volume will appeal as the critical resource for the students in training who determine the future of cognitive science.