Introduction to Connectionist Modelling of Cognitive Processes

for 2 years i have been searching for textbooks on artificial intelligence that contain actual skills and techniques you can use here and now. so many books on artificial intelligence seem to be all sizzle and no steak. this book is all steak. finally i have found a book that says "this is what we know how to do. this is how it works. this is how YOU do it." the things that can be done with the information in this book are quite astonishing.although this book is exclusively about the design and funcion of connectionist neural networks, (rather than the construction of them), the simulator it supplies is quite frankly exellent.the book covers many useful topics including the basics of facial recognition, voice recognition, language acquisition, and prototype extraction, as well as delving into various other human cognitive process simulations such as episodal memory formation.i think so highly of this book that i am going to purchase a second copy in the near future, just in case something happens to the first one (which is already falling apart from the amount of use its been getting).my future purchases for artificial intelligence books will not be made from the artificial intelligence category, but rather, cognitive science, computational nueroscience, and anything written by the authors of this book (Peter McLeod, Kim Plunkett & Edmund T. Rolls).