ABSTRACT
Somewhat paradoxically, I have been led to a more than usually self-conscious examination of the functions of theories by the increasing frustration I—and evidently many other investigators of memory—experience in trying to cope with the burgeoning volume of research. One of the principal tactics at our disposal for making sense of the flood of empirical results is to sift them through a criterion of theoretical relevance. But we find the number and variety of models and theories of memory proliferating almost as fast as the empirical findings themselves.
