ABSTRACT
Mook (1989) recently noted that “the explosion of interest in everyday mem ory has enormously enriched the field. Entire areas of investigation that were unknown a few years ago-prospective memory for instance,—are boiling with ideas and findings” (p. 25). It is, of course, encouraging to hear that an ardent defender of artificial laboratory experiments (see Mook, 1983) holds such an enthusiastic view about the accomplishments of everyday memory research (cf. Banaji & Crowder, 1989). In our opinion, however, this view tends to be slightly exaggerated, at least with respect to prospective memory. It is difficult to describe an area of research as boiling with ideas and findings when ap proximately only 45 papers were published over the past 20 years (see Fig. 2.1). This means two papers are published on average per year, or if one takes into account only experimental work, this figure drops to about one paper per year. However, this is great progress compared to a 40-year period preceding the early 1970s1 when, to our knowledge, only three relevant studies appeared, one experimental (Birenbaum, 1930) and two theoretical (Lewin, 1926/1951; Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960). An enhanced interest toward this impor tant but unjustly neglected area of research is also reflected in the fact that recent and forthcoming conferences on memory have started to devote one symposium, among many others, solely to prospective memory. Finally, the publication of the present volume can be said to mark an important milestone in prospective memory research.
