ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to argue for diversity of method in the scientific study of memory. It discusses the memory laboratory is extremely well suited to the study of learning whereas most of the interesting problems of everyday memory concern retrieval. The chapter addresses one class of reasons to venture outside the psychology laboratory to study memory. It attempts to relate enough converging findings to lend confidence to the proposition. Prospective memory is often defined as remembering to remember. G. O. Einstein & M. A. McDaniel, in considering the absence of an age decrement in their prospective memory tasks, point out that a distinction between event-based and time-based tasks may be useful. The study of prospective memory is at the intersection of naturalistic and laboratory approaches to memory. Demonstrating that the principles discovered in the laboratory have generality to complex settings is an important contribution, but naturalistic memory research has other functions as well.
