Cognition and reality presents a systematic, ecologically oriented approach to the cognitive processes, which are treated as skilled and continuing interactions with the environment. Such topics as perception, attention, memory, speech, and introspection are considered in the light of everyday experience as well as experimental research. Contemporary theories of information processing and information pickup are reviewed and criticized, and a conceptual scheme is developed that deals not only with the acquisition of information but its effect on the perceiving individual. "Perception," writes Ulric Neisser, " is surely a matter of discovering what the environment is like and adapting to it." This new scheme has implications for many traditional problems not encompassed by other theories of cognition, including the perception of meaning, the development of individual identity, and the possibility of predicting or controlling human behavior. Readers need no previous training in psychology to understand this book, so it can be used as supplementary reading for courses in introductory psychology, cognition, human thinking, and the psychology of consciousness. --- from book's back cover