Psychology: The Adaptive Mind

If you think all Introductory Psychology texts are essentially the same, you owe it to yourself to take a serious look at this exciting new text by Jim Nairne. Nairne presents all the conventional content of an introductory course in a traditional 16-chapter sequence, but with a twist. Rather than beginning with theory or research (as most texts do), he begins each topic with an everyday example of a "problem" to be solved (for example, how to remember a telephone number or how we can "know" that a rattlesnake's rattle signals an event). As Nairne states, "I've been teaching Introductory Psychology for 15 years, and the single most-asked question students have is 'Why are we studying this? It's all about rats and drooling dogs, but what is the point?' " To write a text that would answer students' questions in a meaningful way, Nairne took a novel "adaptive problem-solving" approach. The response from professors has been overwhelmingly positive. Many find the Nairne text the "book they've been waiting for!" In every chapter, Nairne "reframes" the subject matter of psychology by placing the major emphasis on how particular behaviors, cognitive processes, and emotions help people solve important adaptive problems -- not just survival problems, but everyday problems. For example, the principles for classical conditioning are introduced as "solutions" to the problem of how people learn about signals in their environment; neural transmission is introduced as a "solution" to the problems associated with communicating internally; and short-term memory is introduced as a "solution" to the problem of how people remember information over the short term.