Previous correspondents (Pylyshyn, 1982;Anderson, 1984) have started their reports with disclaimers about being able to provide a systematic review of cognitive psychology or even an unbiased sample of the field. I have little choice but to follow suit. Cognitive psychology is too diverse, and its practitioners too productive, for most of us to have a grasp of all the important research directions. What I will do, then, is focus on a few areas of research that seem promising and that I have some familiarity with. These areas deal with concepts and reasoning, and are distinguished by their common concern with 'everyday' or 'natural' reasoning, as well as by the fact that they have not figured centrally in recent correspondents' reports.
First, some remarks about sources are in order. Cognitive psychology research is published in many different journals, including journals specialized in neuroscience, congnitive anthropology, psychophysics, psycholinguistics, human-machine interactions, education, and so on. However, there is a hard core of journals that are devoted to basic research in cognition. These journals are well represented in the review that follows and are among the best entry points into the psychological literature. They include: (1) Behavioral and Brain Science, (2) Cognition, (3) Cognitive Psychology, (4) Cognitive Science, (5)