Abstract
Reviewed by: Naveen Kashyap, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India
Technology has become such an inherent part of our daily lives that we have to interact with it both physically and mentally at our place of work and within the comfort of our homes. Understanding the positive and negative aspects of technology can help individuals in optimizing their actions within cyberspace. The present book ‘Cybercognition: Brain, Behaviour and the Digital World’ has been written with the aim of understanding the relationship between technology and people (see Figure 1). Lee Hadlington, the author is a cognitive psychologist with special interest in the science of cyberpsychology. A senior lecturer at De Montfort University, Dr Hadlington works on understanding the human cognition process in the context of a digital online environment. The author outlines two primary aims of the present book, the first being the study of cognitive processes that people employ while they are interacting with the online world, and whether they differ during offline interactions. The second aim the author outlines is evaluating how being online is influencing humans at the psychological level. The author is particularly interested in studying the effects of being online on such cognitive processes as memory, perception, and attention. The present book is written for undergraduate and graduate students of cyberpsychology and cognitive psychology, and can serve as a good general source of knowledge covering the field of cyberpsychology.
The entire content of the present book falls briefly under two main sections followed by a concluding chapter. The first section is concerned with explaining the concept of cybercognition and related variables while the second section explores various cognitive processes in the context of cyberspace. The primary chapter under the first section outlines the main objectives of the book with an introduction of the primary concepts and terminologies used within the book. Additionally, the definition of cyberspace as well as its interpretation as a psychological construct also forms a major part of this chapter. The second chapter of the book expands on the human information processing system in some detail. This has been done to lay the groundwork for later sections where human cognitive systems are studied in the context of cyberspace. The third chapter studies in detail the people who inhabit cyberspace and outlines their characteristics, and explores how the present digital generation and the older generation are accepting the digital space and discusses issues pertaining to these interactions. The second section begins with understanding the factors that help us focus our attentional resources especially in the context of online environment within cyberspace. The fourth chapter addresses the issue of attentional blindness in the context of cyberspace. This chapter elaborates on issues related to limited attentional span and its role in the interaction within cyberspace. The fifth chapter investigates a very interesting view that gaming within the digital environment improves cognitive capabilities in humans. This chapter evaluates evidence both in favor of and against the claim that cognitive improvements occur while interacting with digital games. Further, this chapter also introduces the concept of brain training, which promises to improve cognitive skills. The sixth chapter deals with the issue of multitasking and explores it within the framework of cyberspace. The author in this chapter examines the effect of multitasking on task performance especially within cyberspace. The seventh chapter is dedicated to studying the effects of task interruptions on performance within the context of digital technology. The author focusses on email and smartphone notifications that can lead to ongoing task interruptions and discusses ways to minimize such interruptions. The focus of the eighth chapter is the effects of digital technology on academic outcomes. The impact of social networking sites on learning experiences as well as the impact of cyberspace and digital technology on learning within academic contexts are discussed in detail. The ninth chapter discusses the mechanisms involved when individuals take decisions in the online digital environment. Further, it also discusses those heuristics that humans use to judge credibility within cyberspace. The 10th chapter is dedicated to understanding the processes involved for individuals navigating within cyberspace while looking for information. The chapter also discusses how information within cyberspace shapes our information search and how ‘stop’ strategies terminate such searches in the online digital environment. The 11th chapter within this section discusses an important issue of technology addiction and its role in shaping our cognitive processes. The chapter outlines addictions such as internet addiction, social network addiction and smartphone addiction, and discusses their role in human cognition. The 12th, and last, chapter of the book is a conclusion chapter in which the author summarizes the entire content of the book and describes the nature of our interactions within cyberspace. The author toward the end of the chapter also outlines future prospects based on our present knowledge about cyberspace.
Lee Hadlington’s book on Cybercognition is a much-needed, valuable addition to the texts available in the field of cyber psychology. The book’s subject matter covers a range of diverse topics, some of which have been a recent focus of investigation in the literature. Some of the most impressive problems dealt within the text are the section on brain training (how digital games improve human cognition) and how technology addiction influences cognitive processes. The subject matter under each topic gets support by relevant results from the research literature. Readers can use the results presented in the book to improve their online interactions. The language of the book is lucid and impressive, and the sections follow a natural flow. Some of most influential aspects of the book include learning aims at the start of each chapter, Information snippets and questions to consider, detailed tables and figures, and a chapter summary that is informative and elegantly written. The present book would benefit from inclusion of key terms such as definitions within each chapter. Another addition could be test questions at the end of each chapter that will help readers test their learning after completing each chapter. Overall, the book is a brilliant attempt to cover a few knowledge gaps in the area of cyber psychology and after reading the book, it becomes apparent that the book has achieved all aims that it was attempting to achieve.