Unfortunately, and despite the increasing vigor of their respective fields, students of normal and abnormal memory have not enjoyed active communication with one another; consequently, the developments in the two fields over the past 15 or 20 years have proceeded largely in parallel. In the experimental psychology of intact memory, perhaps the sole point of meaningful contact with amnesia research has taken the form of the inclusion of clinical facts about the amnesic syndrome in theoretical discussions of the distinction between short] term and long-term memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Wickelgren, 1973, 1979). Beyond that, however, it would be difficult to find any systematic account of amnesic phenomena in the numerous recent theories of normal human memory, and utilization of amnesic data by mainstream experimentalists in attacking problems of normal memory is likewise rare. Indeed, several leading researchers have contended that amnesic phenomena currently lie outside the desirable boundaries of memory research. Murdock (1974), for instance, has cautioned that: "It is difficult enough understanding the memory of normal college students; it will be time to consider the abnormal cases after we can cope with the normal cases [p. 5]." And Postman (1975) has cast doubt on the usefulness of amnesic data for experimental psychologists, warning that: "extrapolations from pathological deficits to the structure of normal memory are of uncertain validity [p. 308]."

There are, however, some positive signs of change. For instance, one can point to the recent appearance of papers concerning various amnesic phenomena in "hard-core" memory journals: Several studies of Korsakoff patients have appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology (Cermak & Reale, 1978; Oscar-Berman, 1976), experiments concerning drug-induced amnesia have been published in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior (Birnbaum, Parker, Hartley, & Noble, 1978; Eich, Weingartner, Stillman, & Gillen, 1975; Hartley, Birnbaum, & Parker, 1978), and a recent issue of Memory & Cognition contained an experimental study of Korsakoff amnesics (McDowell, 1979). Furthermore, the appearance of theories such as the one recently put forward by Wickelgren (1979) constitute a major advance in pulling together the insights of experimental psychology and the observations on amnesia.

It is only fair to point out that students of amnesia have harbored their own doubts concerning the usefulness of experimental psychology in the analysis of memory and its pathology. As long ago as 1901, Pierre Janet, one of the century's most innovative clinical psychiatrists, sarcastically depicted psychology's role in the study of memory as follows: "The psychologists in their descriptions admit of no other elementary phenomena of memory than conservation and reproduction. We think that they are wrong, and that disease decomposes and analyzes memory better than psychology [p. 102]." Despite similar misgivings expressed by other students of pathological memory from time to time, signs of hope are evident here too, as a number of contemporary amnesia researchers have sought to establish an alliance with experimental psychology. Expressed largely in the work of Warrington and Weiskrantz in England, and Cermak and his colleagues in Boston, the methods, findings, and theories of experimental psychology are beginning to find a home in the analysis of amnesia. Studies of amnesia that utilize the insights of experimental psychology have been undertaken by an increasingly diverse group of researchers in the past few years, and there is every reason to believe that this trend will continue in the future.

In short, there is reason to believe that we may be on the verge of a "golden age" in which the interaction between the experimental psychology of normal memory and the investigation of amnesic deficits will be more thorough and meaningful than it has been in the past. Texts like the present one will hasten the arrival of this golden age, inasmuch as one of its important functions is to explore ways to remove the remaining barriers and problems preventing the integration and interaction of the two fields. . .

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