REVIEWS

“Cognitive Illusions”, edited by Rüdiger F. Pohl. (2017), a Psychology Press Book, published by Routledge, second edition.

494 pages | 23 B/W Illus., Paperback: 9781138903425

Publisher’s catalogue price £37.99

A Cognitive Illusion occurs when our thinking is systematically biased. Our understanding of these errors has grown in depth since the three described by Amos Twersky and Daniel Kahneman (1974). This present book edited by Pohl now discusses twenty-four errors in all.

In that seminal paper, Twersky and Kahneman itemised three kinds of thinking errors, whereby people erroneously believe that their own judgement is valid and reliable.

First, errors of representativeness, where people are asked to judge the probability that an objective event A belongs to a class B. For instance, “Steve has been described as shy, withdrawn, helpful, a meek and tidy soul, with a need for structure and a passion for detail.” Subjects are then asked to assess the probabilities that Steve could be a librarian, farmer, sales clerk, airline pilot, or doctor. Without real evidence, people will plump for their stereotypes.

Secondly, humans use the availability of evidence from past instances or scenarios to judge the frequency or plausibility of a particular development. In this error, people may assess the risk of a heart attack amongst middle-aged people by recalling occurrences amongst their acquaintances.

Thirdly, in numerical predictions, humans may adjust their thinking from a given anchor. For example, subjects were asked for the percentage of African countries in the United Nations. When the question was phrased: “is it more than 10%?” the median of the subject responses was 25%. Whereas if they were asked, “is it more than 45%?” the median of the subjects’ responses was 65%.

Now, rather than these three heuristics as source of errors, this present book edited by Pohl describes nine thinking errors, eight judgement errors, and seven memory errors. Indeed, this updated second edition has six more chapters than its first edition version.

Pohl, for the second edition, has amassed a team of thirty-five contributors from Australia, Canada, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, UK, and USA.

In addition to the twenty-four chapters, one on each type of error, there is also a chapter on the highly relevant area of suggestibility.

The chapters are all the same length and uniform in layout. They have informative and well-structured headings, so it is easy to find one’s way around. Each chapter has a review of the latest state of the illusion, a critique of the initial main experiment that demonstrated the phenomenon, and a balanced discussion of potential explanations. Each chapter ends with a succinct bullet-point summary of its main points, a conclusion, suggestions for further reading and a comprehensive bibliography.

There is also a manual in each chapter showing how to demonstrate the illusion in a classroom laboratory. This laboratory manual includes notes on materials and word lists, as well as a note on the power of the statistical effect detailing the number of participants that would be required in experimental and control groups.

The chapters vary in how easy they are to understand. They all definitely repay careful reading, but part of one chapter would require some mathematical knowledge, although it might be possible to skip that short section without jeopardising an understanding of the concepts. Overall, the material is accessible to students and psychologically-minded readers.

In conclusion, this book has opened my eyes to the fact that I am making cognitive errors of thinking, judgement and memory in my everyday life. Yet they are so insidious and powerful that I might only know about them in retrospect.

Reference

Twersky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131

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The Rocking Horse Diary by Alan Combes, illustrated by

John Sunderland. Fantastic Books Publishing, 2018.

This is a good book with a lovely story, which I read avidly in one sitting.

Its purpose is to explain Alzheimer’s Disease to a child, focussing on the social impact on him and his family. The reading level is roughly 8-12. It sits in the categories multigenerational, friendship, and family.

It is in the form of a diary written by a boy, beginning in mid-October and counting down to Christmas.

The boy is inspired by studying at school DH Lawrence’s short story: ‘The Rocking Horse Winner.’ He wants a wooden rocking horse of his own and his grandfather offers to build one for him. However, the project is threatened by grandfather’s deteriorating health, and the boy is increasingly likely to be disappointed as Christmas approaches.

The book shows the impact of Alzheimer’s at a personal family level, not just the role of health and social services. It is not at all depressing, as there are many humorous moments. Among my favourite are the grumpy encounters the grandfather has with well-meaning neighbours – surely a facet of human life in general, not just of dementia sufferers.

The book is given authority by a foreword from Dr Lynne Corner, Director of Newcastle University’s Dementia Innovation Hub. Not that the author needs this, for he is an accomplished journalist of several books and newspaper columns. The Illustrator, John Sunderland, has some brilliant and apt humorous line drawings. I especially liked the detailed drawing of the rocking horse. His previous work includes art-design and concept development of the Jorvik Viking Centre, York.

The book is well-produced with faultless clear writing. At one point, it achieves poetry with “…snow falling like feathers from a million birds”.

It certainly achieves its objectives in an entertaining way. I warm-heartedly recommend it.

This book was gifted to the reviewer by the author in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.

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Review of “Extraordinary” by Dawn Knox.

Dawn Knox writes war stories, horror, speculative fiction, romance, and this is the third book she has published.
It is a collection of stories, varying from the simple to the complex. It encompasses a whole range of speculative and science fiction, and also horror.
I found these stories intriguing from the beginning and the set-up in each one culminated in a startling ending.
‘Earthrights’ has witty puns on the character’s names: Bohnan the Carbairian who wants a holiday home in the Drosophila Galaxy convinces another being to buy Earth off him by offering an attractive bonus.
A longer science fiction story is ‘To Sleep – Perchance to Live’ detailing a tragic event involving mutation and bacteria on a space station where all the crew suspect each other.
The horror stories include ‘The Game’ where the main character has to garrotte someone, and ‘Hell of a Time’ where Matthew Norris dies and is sent to hell to confront his fears. In ‘Leave it to Lester’ a man has regular brain servicing to make him docile, but decides to hatch a gruesome plan to escape. ‘The Way of the Obtectus’ also involves a gruesome metamorphosis, but has an optimistic ending.
‘The Four Riders of the <s> Apopalycse </s> Apocalypse’ is a skit on a biblical story. A prankster in heaven plays a joke on another angel involving a bogus job that attracts cyclists via a fish and chip shop postal address.
Amongst the magic speculative stories, ‘In Need of a Fairy Godmother’ asks the reader to decide on the philanthropy of this particular fairy godmother. ‘Solid as Rock-Mate’ sees unemployed Martin discovering a magic pebble with unexpected consequences. Henry‘s optimistic attitude to life in ‘Henry’s Box’ leads him to a magic encounter with a box in an old warehouse.
Finally in ‘Most precious’ a high priestess‘s magical decanter of sacred water is found by an archaeologist who wants to keep the find for himself.

In conclusion, this book is a revelation to magic worlds on earth and on different planets. The writer has a talented and inventive mind. Though I do not normally read horror/speculative fiction, I did find this book very entertaining, and would recommend its purchase to readers of these genres.
I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

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