Originally published in 1980, this title was designed to present key topics in cognitive psychology to university and college students in a way that drew out the main ideas behind those topics, this book also shows how these ideas were likely to develop over the following years. Its special characteristics are its efforts to anticipate the most fruitful lines of development and to integrate a number of different authors' opinions about where the strengths and weaknesses of cognitive psychology lie. At the time the contributors were in the main younger lecturers in cognitive psychology who were, through their own research, actively engaged in bringing new directions into being.

The volume will still be of interest to cognitive psychologists in general who wish to reflect on what the field was, and who are concerned about the conceptual and methodological growth points in the discipline. In addition to chapters with familiar headings, such as attention, remembering and problem-solving, the book also contains contributions on cross-cultural cognition and on action, as well as two complementary overviews of cognitive psychology as a whole. Today it can be read in its historical context.