Prospective Memory
An Overview and Synthesis of an Emerging Field
- Mark A. McDaniel - Washington University, St Louis, USA, Washington University, USA
- Gilles O. Einstein - Furman University, USA
While there are many books on retrospective memory, or remembering past events, Prospective Memory: An Overview and Synthesis of an Emerging Field is the first authored text to provide a straightforward and integrated foundation to the scientific study of memory for actions to be performed in the future. Authors Mark A. McDaniel and Gilles O. Einstein present an accessible overview and synthesis of the theoretical and empirical work in this emerging field.
Key Features:
- Focuses on students rather than researchers: While there are many edited works on prospective memory, this is the first authored text written in an accessible style geared toward students.
- Provides a general approach for the controlled, laboratory study of prospective memory: The authors place issues and research on prospective memory within the context of general contemporary themes in psychology, such as the issue of the degree to which human behavior is mediated by controlled versus automatic processes.
- Investigates the cognitive processes that underlie prospective remembering: Examples are provided of event-based, time-based, and activity-based prospective memory tasks while subjects are engaged in ongoing activities to parallel day-to-day life.
- Suggests fruitful directions for further advancement: In addition to integrating what is now a fairly loosely connected theoretical and empirical field, this book goes beyond current work to encourage new theoretical insights.
Intended Audience:
This relatively brief book is an excellent supplemental text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Memory, Human Memory, and Learning & Memory in the departments of psychology and cognitive science.
In their new book, McDaniel & Einstein provide a direly needed review of this fascinating new field, providing important information for researchers, clinicians, and laypeople alike on how basic cognitive science is coming to a "big picture" understanding of prospective memory. The authors write very clearly, avoiding jargon and remaining casual while nonetheless maintaining the intellectual "pace" that is more commonly found in peer-reviewed journal articles. Highly recommended to students of psychology who are curious about an up-and-coming area of research that is ripe for further work.
The processing of information in a sporting context is vital for performance. Team sports frequently have playbooks that contain hundreds of plays that are not always easy to remember. Understanding memory process will help in particular tasks that do not require immediate attention which makes this book very suitable for supplementary reading.
This is a great book that is both stimulating and easy to read. It successfully summarises the main advances in this emerging field and fully captures 2 decades of research on Prospective memory
Sage College Publishing
