Empirical Potpourri

If there exists one book series in experimental psychology that every academician is familiar with, it would have to be The Psychology of Learning and Motivation (see record 2004-00153-000), which has now reached Volume 44 in the series. Chapters from these familiar red tomes have been a staple of graduate student reading lists for many years, and with good reason. The contributors to these volumes include a veritable who's who of experimental psychology, particularly with regard to research in cognition, and a great deal of fundamentally important work has appeared in the series. The individual contributions in this volume are insightful, well reasoned, and integrative; just what one would hope for from this series. In addition, the first four of the nine chapters review psycholinguistic topics, which provides some thematic coherence. Many of the chapters, however, presuppose considerable knowledge about the topic under discussion. This is inevitable because one cannot explicate basic concepts and attempt to advance the state of the art at the same time. However, it does limit the target audience to those who already possess some expertise in these research areas. As can be seen, this volume in The Psychology of Learning and Motivation series provides penetrating analyses of a wide array of issues in cognition. Although some readers may not care for the buffet of topics that it offers, many others will find this wide-ranging cross-section of current research to be both thought provoking and stimulating. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)