As a scientific enterprise, the study of memory is relatively new and fairly successful. The methods set out by Ebbinghaus only a century ago are adequate to demonstrate that the psychological study of memory can be scientific. As we progress and try to demonstrate that psychology can also increase our practical and theoretical understandings, Ebbinghaus's laboratory methods often seem insufficient. Our own progress and confidence have led us to broaden the research we do.

One aspect of this progress has been the call for cognitive and experimental psychologists to move out of the laboratory. Recent examples include this book, Neisser's attacks on the kind of laboratory studies he carried out in 1967, numerous American Psychologist articles on basic methodological issues, and even the “Call for Papers” of the Psychonomic Society. Possibly independent of all of this, academic and research psychologists are spending a greater proportion of their time studying practical, complex, real-world problems in the name of science. Is this really a good idea, or just the latest fad? Psychology is fond of the theory of pendulum swings. Can a little forethought dampen the pendulum?

Part I of this book provides a rationale, or, more accurately, a set of rationales, for studying cognition in the “real world” rather than in the laboratory. Unlike Parts II and III, Part I does not provide reviews of the literature, but rather provides arguments for pursuing science in various ways.