ABSTRACT
Working memory holds the information and runs the programs that we need to tell us what to do next. In this sense it is time travel, our best guess at how we shall cope with the future. We learn a great deal from studying failures of our plans. While author worked in Manchester, he had the benefit of frequent conversations with Jim Reason, a British expert on human errors in managing complex and fraught processes such as landing aircraft, avoiding railway accidents, carrying out surgery and managing nuclear power stations. The earliest prospective memory experiments were simple, laboratory studies of how well people can do things they have been asked to do precisely when they have been asked to do them. Biochemical and hormonal changes also alter memory efficiency, as menopausal women well know. Many Manchester volunteers complained that they made more lapses than usual on days on which they felt physically below par.
