Suggested Reading for CogSci Grad Students

Several freshly minted graduate students recently asked me what they should
be reading over the summer before their studies begin. I gave the matter
some thought, and this was one of the results. The papers and books below
are among those which I think every graduate student in cognitive science
ought to read, regardless of their area of specialization. (Note the personal
pronoun; this list is in no way unbiased.) Needless to say, there is just as
much additional 'required reading' within any given area of specialization.

The current version of this document is: 9/7/14.

Helpful suggestions and additions for this list were provided by: Chris
Chabris, Zenon Pylyshyn, Jonathan Weinberg.

Please forward suggested additions to brian.scholl@yale.edu.

General Scientific Methodology

Platt, J. R. (1964). Strong inference. Science, 146, 347-353.
[Very highly recommended!]

Kuhn, T. S. (1970).The structure of scientific revolutions, 2nd Edition.

Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Cohen, J. (1992). Fuzzy methodology. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 409-

410.
McGuire, W. J. (1997). Creative hypothesis generating in psychology: Some
useful heuristics. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 1-30.
[I'm unsure how ultimately useful advice of this sort is, but this is the best
example I've seen of some heuristics for generating research ideas.]

Koenderink, J. J. (2002). The head and the hands [Guest

Editorial].Perception, 31 517-520.
[Some helpful thoughts about being a experimenter vs. a theoretician.]

Ioannidis, J. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS
Medicine, 2(8), e124.
[Now that's a provocative title, eh? For a popular treatment, see Jonah
Lehrer's 12/13/10 New Yorker article, called "The truth wears off: Is there
something wrong with the scientific method?"]

Statistics & Psychological Methodology

Sedlmeier, P., & Gigerenzer, G. (1989). Do studies of statistical power have
an effect on the power of studies? Psychological Bulletin, 105, 309-316.

Gigerenzer, G., et al. (1989). The inference experts. Chapter 3 of The empire
of chance: How probability changed science and everyday life. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
[This book is a history of statistics, with a focus on how statistics became
integrated into various disciplines and into culture more generally. Chapter 3
in particular focuses on the development of the Fisherian and Pearsonian
views of statistics, a crude combination of which infest today's
psychological practice. Very interesting, and well worth reading!]
Cohen, J. (1994). The earth is round (p < .05). American Psychologist, 49,
997-1003.

Dar, R., Serlin, R., & Omer, H. (1994). Misuse of statistical tests in three
decades of psychotherapy research.Journal of consulting and clinical
psychology, 62, 75-82.

Roberts, S., & Pashler, H. (2000). How persuasive is a good fit? A comment
on theory testing.Psychological Review, 107, 358-367.
[Nuanced discussion of the utility and pitfalls of fitting a model to a data set.
Too many such models aren't really useful, for the reasons discussed here.]

Mellers, B., Hertwig, R., & Kahneman, D. (2001). Do frequency

representations eliminate conjunction effects? An exercise in adversarial
collaboration.Psychological Science, 12(4), 269-275.
[For this purpose, ignore the stuff on frequency representations and focus on
the method of adversarial collaboration!]

Dixon, P. (2003). The p-value fallacy and how to avoid it.Canadian Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 57, 189-202.
[A nice primer on why you shouldn't rely too much on ".05".]

Gigerenzer, G. (2004). Mindless statistics. Journal of Socio-Economics, 33,

587-606.
[The best summary I've read about what's wrong with statistical practice
today! This presents a summary of some of the same ideas from the
Gigerenzer et al. (1989) chapter cited above, but in an updated and focused
form. Entertainingly and aggressively written.]

Durgin, F., Baird, J., Greenburg, M., Russell, R., Shaughnessy, K., &
Waymouth, S. (2009). Who is being deceived? The experimental demands
of wearing a backpack. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 964-969.
[This is the best example I have read in recent years of how and why it is
important to avoid task demands in your experiments! Utterly devastating.]

Henrich, J., Heine, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the
world?Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61-135.
[Some thoughts on how a constrained subject population might impede the
search for truth.]

Simmons, J., Nelson, L., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive

psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows
presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22, 1359-1366.
[A contemporary must-read paper, this summarizes several key aspects of
methodology and analysis that are necessary in order to be either an
informed consumer or producer of research!]

Theoretical Underpinnings of Cognitive Science

Turing, A. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-
460.
[Widely reprinted, e.g. in Hofstadter & Dennett's The Mind's I. Ignore the bit
on ESP.]
Chomsky, N. (1959).A review of B. F. Skinner's 'Verbal
behavior'.Language, 35, 26-58.
[This book review ended up changing an entire field. Widely reprinted, e.g.
in Block's Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology.]

Putnam, H. (1979). Reductionism and the nature of psychology.Cognition,

2, 131-146.
[An early influential statement of why reductionism won't work for
psychology. Widely reprinted, e.g. in Haugeland's Mind Design.]

Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the
Panglossian program: A critique of the adaptationist programme.
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 205, 281-288.
[An antidote to careless adaptationism. An infamous paper, widely
reprinted.]

Searle, J. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs.Behavioral and Brain

Sciences, 3(3), 417-457.
[Skim the commentaries too, and remember that arguments needn't be right
to be important and instructive! This one is also widely reprinted, e.g. in
Hofstadter & Dennett's The Mind's I.]

Fodor, J. A. (1983). Modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1984). Computation and cognition: Toward a foundation

for cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[Tough going at parts, but full of subtle, extremely important ideas.]
Churchland, P. M. (1988). Matter and Consciousness, Revised Edition.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[A great summary of the various -isms: behaviorism, functionalism, dualism,
eliminative materialism, etc.]

Dennett, D. C. (1995). Darwin's dangerous idea. New York: Simon &

Schuster.
[Or any of several other introductions to evolutionary theory, oriented to the
cognitive sciences.]

Pinker, S. (1997).How the mind works. New York: Norton.

[A very well-written summary of the state of the art circa the late 90s across
much of cognitive science, written from an 'evolutionary psychology'
perspective, for the lay-reader.]

The History of Psychology

James, W. (1890/1950).The principles of psychology. New York: Dover.
[The single most important historical book you can read. Very highly
recommended.]

Mandler, G. (2011). A history of modern experimental psychology: From

James and Wundt to cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[It's always nice to know at least something about the history of your field!]

The Sociology of Science

Ramon y Cajal, S. (1897/2004). Advice for a young investigator. Translation
reprinted by: Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[Extremely useful thoughts on getting started in science, from more than 100
years ago.]

Campbell, D. T. (1969).Ethnocentrism of disciplines and the fish-scale

model of omnicience.In M. Sherif & C. W. Sherif (Eds.), Interdisciplinary
relationships in the social sciences (pp. 328-348). Xenia, OH: Aldine.
[While many of the specific ideas in this chapter strike me as wrong or
misguided, this is an excellent framework for thinking about how to find an
appropriate research topic and initial career path -- and also an excellent
stimulant for thinking about the organization of our field.]

Nisbett, R. (1978). A guide for reviewers: Editorial hardball in the 70s.

American Psychologist, May, 519-520.
[Humorous and dead-on characterization of the sociology of reviewing
papers in our field. Still relevant, alas.]

Nisbett, R. (1990). The anticreativity letters: Advice from a senior tempter to

a junior tempter. American Psychologist, September, 1078-1082.
[Thoroughly excellent and characteristically well written advice on how
(not) to best position yourself for scientific success.]

Thompson, K. S. (1994). Scientific publishing: An embarrassment of riches.

American Scientist, 82, 508-511.

Greene, M. T. (1997). What cannot be said in science.Nature, 388, 619-

620.
Rozin, P. (2006). Domain denigration and process preference in academic
psychology.Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 365-376.
[An important meditation on how typical foci of research in psychology
depart from what most people care about.]