Ulterior Motives

How goals, both seen and unseen, drive behavior
Art Markman is a cognitive scientist at the University of Texas whose research spans a range of topics in the way people think. See full bio

Ulterior Motives

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Books by Art Markman, Ph.D.

Cognition Basics

brain cognition

Quite simply, cognition refers to thinking. There are the obvious applications of conscious reasoning—doing taxes, playing chess, deconstructing Macbeth—but thought takes many subtler forms, such as interpreting sensory input, guiding physical actions, and empathizing with others. The old metaphor for human cognition was the computer—a logical information-processing machine.

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