Visual Cognition
Visual Cognition by Steven Pinker is a 1986 Psychology & Mind book written by TED speaker Steven Pinker, paired here with the talk they gave.
The pairing
- Paired talk: "Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers" (2018), 4.8M views on TED.com
- Timing: Published 32 years before the talk.
- In the catalogue: The 1st of 14 books by Steven Pinker on Books Worth Reading (1986–2025), by publication year.
- Edition: MIT Press, 1986 · 285 pages
The paired TED talk
Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers (2018), the TED talk by Steven Pinker.
From the publisher
These essays tackle some of the central issues in visual cognition, presenting experimental techniques from cognitive psychology, new ways of modeling cognitive processes on computers from artificial intelligence, and new ways of studying brain organization from neuropsychology, to address such questions as: How do we recognize objects in front of us? How do we reason about objects when they are absent and only in memory? How do we conceptualize the three dimensions of space? Do different people do these things in different ways? And where are these abilities located in the brain? While this research, which appeared as a special issue of the journal Cognition, is at the cutting edge of cognitive science, it does not assume a highly technical background on the part of readers. The book begins with a tutorial introduction by the editor, making it suitable for specialists and nonspecialists alike.