Thinking and Concept Attainment

Abstract

This review draws upon available work in English published during the period 1970 through 1973. The reference list was derived from two computer searches (Medline and Compfile), Psychological Abstracts, and the contents of relevant major journals for the 4 year period. The resulting yield was much too large to be included in this review. A more compelling argument for selectivity and evalua­ tion stems from the state of the field itself: it is diffuse, parochially compartmen­ talized, and lacking in comprehensive theorizing. There is little doubt that the mind is back in style. The words cognition and cognitive occur in current literature with high frequency in such disparate areas as memory, perception, and even conditioning. The period of review has seen the appearance of three new journals: Cognitive Psychology, Cognition, and Memory and Cognition. But the wide currency of the term has not been free of a certain amount of devaluation; cognition has so many variant meanings and connota­ tions that the remaining common core seems to be any activity involving CNS activity between its initiation and completion . With so broad a definition there is little, save spinal-level reflex, excluded from the class. This will not, therefore, be a review of cognition. Rather, it is a review of in the old-fashioned sense, where is defined as mental transformations employing sym­ bolic surrogates of events, objects, and processes, or properties and relations thereof. The theoretical framework underlying research on thinking has shifted over the years. There is now very little work explicitly inspired by Gestalt theory or by