ABSTRACT
Times are changing. the invitation to talk about applied problems in a symposium on memory is something that would have seemed extremely odd only a few years ago. For many years applied psychology seems to have been regarded either as an occupational net, providing work for those who were not good enough to reach the ethereal heights of "pure" psychology, or at best as a pardonable perversion practiced among a few eccentric groups of experimental psychologists such as my own in Cambridge. Applied experimental psychology appears to be in danger of achieving respectability, perhaps even popularity. As someone who kicked the applied habit some 10 years ago and then relapsed. I would like to take this chance of talking about some of the attractions of applied work, together with its snags and frustrations. As I tend to have a rather concrete mind, I base my paper on a problem of some practical importance that has been concerning my own and other laboratories during recent years, namely that of remembering and recognizing faces.
