ABSTRACT
Since the very beginning of memory research in psychology, a most controversial issue has been the question if memory represents a general, unitary human faculty or rather a variety of specific and probably independent abilities. Everyday-life experiences lead us to believe that one can distinguish between people with a generally good memory who are able to remember various incidents and facts even after a long period of time, and those who easily forget whatever they have been told to keep in mind. On the other hand, pioneers of experimental research in memory like Ebbinghaus ( 1885) or Meumann ( 1907) already considered the possibility of extreme intraindividual differences in tasks covering different memory contents (e.g., assessing memory for prose versus memory for numbers). Meumann's position was not very clear, however; in his earlier studies (cf. Meumann 1907), he proposed a distinction between a "general memory" and several "task -specific memories," whereas he doubted the existence of a "general memory" in a later publication (Meumann, 1918), emphasizing the fact that-according to his empirical investigations-only special memories could be found.
