Forgetting: Explaining Memory Failure

Forgetting is the most obvious feature of human memory, whether this is everyday forgetfulness, like leaving your keys at home, or more serious medical conditions, such as amnesia. Forgetting: Explaining Memory Failure uses the most up-to-date evidence available to examine the psychological processes behind these extremes and everything in between. It explores why we have so little recollection of our childhood lives, as well as why we may create false memories of events that never happened.

In this book, Michael Eysenck & David Groome use cutting-edge research to examine one of the central issues in the study of memory: forgetting. It challenges assumptions about the processing of memory, offering insights into key debates, as well as providing readers with the critical skills to develop their own conclusions on the topic. With chapters from leading figures, this book also emphasises the positive aspects of forgetting, an important and often overlooked area in the field.

Michael W. Eysenck is Professorial Fellow at Roehampton University and Emeritus Professor and Honorary Fellow at Royal Holloway University of London. He has published 49 books and approximately 160 articles and book chapters. He has written numerous textbooks on cognitive psychology and his main research area is concerned with the relationship between anxiety and cognition. His hobbies include bridge, croquet, travelling, and walking.

David Groome was Principal Lecturer in the Psychology Department at the University of Westminster, London. He retired in 2011, but he retains a research connection with the department. His research interests mainly involved cognition and memory, especially memory suppression and retrieval-induced forgetting, and he has also published papers on the effects of drugs and mood disorders on cognition. He is the author/co-author of nine cognitive psychology textbooks. In 2009 he received the BPS Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Psychology. His hobbies include tennis, dogs, travel, and music. In his spare time he is a keen guitarist, and he occasionally performs in public but without as yet achieving the stardom he feels he deserves. Despite the success of the singing detective and the singing postman, it seems that the world is not yet ready for a singing psychologist.