ABSTRACT
This is a remarkable book. Over the years, I, like other authors in this volume, have felt the need to start articles and talks on intentional forgetting with the argument that forgetting is not simply a failure of humans as information-processing devices, but, rather, that forgetting is an essential component of any information-processing system, living or artificial; that there must be some means to forget, or erase, or inhibit, or segregate out-of-date information. To illustrate that argument, it has also seemed necessary to point to examples of everyday situations where forgetting is consistent with our goals, especially the need to update our memories. In this volume as well, Colin MacLeod's impressive overview of directed-forgetting research begins in similar fashion, as does the E. L. Bjork, R. A. Bjork, and Anderson chapter on "Varieties of Goal-Directed Forgetting."
