Memory & Cognition
1980, Vol. 8 (1), 31-38
Memory aids people use: Two interview studies
JOHN E. HARRIS
MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge CB22EF, England
In two interview studies subjects were asked what memory aids they used and how often.
In particular, the reported frequencies of use of external aids such as shopping lists and
memos were compared with those of internal aids that have been investigated by psychologists,
such as the method of loci. Subjects in the first study were 15 male and 15 female university
students, and in the second, a group of 30 adult women, most of whom were housewives.
In both studies the aids reported to be used most were external ones. However, it
is pointed out that the most commonly used methods of remembering must be internal,
although these are not usually considered to be aids. Some difficulties that arise in the
assessment of memory in interview and questionnaire studies are discussed.
After years of neglect there has been, during the
last 15 years, a steady increase in the attention experimental
psychologists have paid to memory aids. Both
the past neglect and the present interest have been
discussed elsewhere (e.g., Brown & Deffenbacher,
1975; Higbee, 1978, in press, Note 1). Research on
memory aids has been directed at a variety of questions,
although most have to do with testing in the laboratory
the effectiveness of what may be called internal aids.
These are learned schemes for remembering specific
types of information. They usually involve only internal,
mental manipulation, such as the formation of mental
images or bizarre associations or the composition of a
story. However, there are also many memory aids that
depend for their effectiveness upon external manipulation
of the environment. This may involve writing in a
diary, making a shopping list, setting a cooking timer, or
even asking someone else to provide a reminder. Memory
aids of this type will be referred to as external.
Few studies have included external aids, and few
have dealt with the use of memory aids in everyday life,
although a number have gone some way in these directions.
For example, some have looked at the use of
internal aids by students (e.g., Carlson, Kincaid, Lance,
& Hodgson, 1976; Gruneberg, 1973), and metamemory
studies (see Flavell & Wellman, 1977) have investigated
children's knowledge of methods of remembering,
including external ones (e.g., Kreutzer, Leonard, &
Flavell, 1975). Also, Hunter (1979) has included
external devices in his discussion of memory aids. In
his general category of "memory-aiding devices," he
includes all artificial information storage, including
written records, films, tapes, and computerized records,
and he refers to "the communal memory store ....
The second study was supported by the British Medical
Research Council. The author thanks Alan Baddeley, John
Duncan, and Arnold Wilkins for their comments on an earlier
draft of the manuscript. Requests for reprints should be sent
to John E. Harris, Medical Research Council Applied Psychology
Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 2EF, England.
Copyright 1980 Psychonomic Society, Inc. 31
exemplified by a library or by the files of an office"
(p. 5). A first step in investigating the use of memory
aids in everyday life is to find out what aids, both internal
and external, are used and how often. This was the
purpose of the interview studies reported in this paper.
METHOD
Two studies are reported, the only major difference between
the methods being in the populations from which the subjects
were drawn.
Subjects
In the first study 30 students from Southampton University
were interviewed. Their mean age was 21 years (range = 19-
27 years), and quotas of 15 male and 15 female students were
set. The subjects were recruited as unpaid volunteers in the
Students' Union building by the interviewer. Between 60% and
70% of the students who were accosted took part.
In the second study 30 female members of the Cambridge
Applied Psychology Unit subject panel were interviewed. They
were mostly housewives, some having part-time jobs. Their mean
age was 46 years (range = 23-67 years); only the two youngest
and a widow were unmarried. In both studies each subject was
interviewed separately.
Interview Content and Procedure
Within each study the same questions were asked in each
interview and in the same order. The subjects replied orally, and
the interviewer marked down the responses on a prepared
score sheet.
In the first part of the interview, the interviewer asked nine
general questions, such as degree subject studied (student subjects)
and marital status and number of children (Cambridge
subjects). In both studies subjects were asked whether they had
ever bought or read a book about memory improvement, and
questions about whether they owned a diary,' calendar, or year
planner for the current year and where any calendar or year
planner was kept.
In the second and principal part of the interview, the subjects
were handed a list of memory aids and asked to rate on a
7-point scale how often they used each aid. The scale is given
at the foot of Figure I. The points on the scale may appear to
be strange choices. However, it was necessary to use the same
scale for alI the aids whether they were used very frequently or
hardly ever, and an alternative scale used in a pilot questionnaire
had proved inadequate.
0090-502X/80/0 10031-08$01.05/0
32 HARRIS
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 2
Sheet Given to SUbjects in Last Part of Interview
This section is divided into two subsections. The first
subsection deals with the reported frequency of use of
the aids asked about in the main section of the interview
and with comparisons between different aids and subject
REMEMBERING EVENTS, INFORMAnON,
AND TO DO THINGS
Below you will find examples of things you may need to
remember from time to time. Please indicate (1) how you would
set about remembering them and (2) how likely it is that you
would be successful.
43
Probably Definitely
Remember Remember
2
Even
Chance
Probably
Forget
Definitely
Forget
o
effective, and psychologists have studied their products. However,
use of these schemes is spontaneous and automatic, in
the sense that they are not taught and that the user is probably
not aware of using them. Therefore, such schemes represent
normal memory operations and are not usually thought of as
"mnemonics" or "memory aids." At the other extreme are the
techniques that often have to be consciously learned and used,
such as the "peg" and "loci" methods (see Table 1). Indeed, in
anticipation of the results, it is probably the time and effort
involved in learning aids of this type that limit the amount they
are used. The important point here, however, is that there seems
to be no clear cu toff point between these internal memory
aids and what were referred to above as normal remembering
schemes.
Therefore, the internal aids included in the interview study
were those encountered in the memory aid literature as having
been investigated, plus some others that were merely mentioned.
The aids were presented to the subjects on a typed sheet
as shown in Table I. Question 18, the use of alarms for waking
up, was not considered to be a memory aid, but it was included
in order to help the subjects give clear responses to Questions 19
and 21, about the use of timed alarms for other purposes.
Sometimes it was necessary for the interviewer to explain
further some of the aids or to give examples of their possible
use. This happened most often with the peg method and in
checking that the subjects understood what was meant by an
external aid in Question 30.
In the last part of the interview, subjects were presented a
typed sheet, as shown in Table 2. The table shows the form
used for the Southampton students; the Cambridge subjects had
a slightly different set of items (e.g., Question 37 was "An
arrangement later today to meet a friend").
33. A close friend's or relative's birthday.
34. An appointment with your dentist or doctor for, say,
next week.
35. To take medicine or pills three times a day.
36. Where you have put something (pen, keys, handbag, etc.).
37. An appointment later today to see your tutor (or super-
visor).
38. People's names (when you meet them for the first time).
39. People's faces (when you meet them for the first time).
40. To buy some bread on the way home.
41. A party at a friend's house in a month's time.
42. The new address of a close friend who has moved.
43. An important telephone number.
44. The meaning of a word you have come across for the
first time.
Table 1
List of Memory Aids Given to Subjects
10. Shopping lists.
11. First-letter "memory aids." For example, the first letters
of "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain" give the colors of
the rainbow.
12. Diary.
13. Rhymes. For example, "In fourteen hundred and ninetytwo
Columbus sailed the ocean blue" aids memory of the date.
14.1he place method (method used since classical times).
The items in a list to be remembered are imagined in a series of
familiar locations. When recall is required one "looks" again in
these familiar locations.
15. Writing on your hand what you need to remember.
16. The story method. For learning a list of items in order,
a story is made up that connects them.
17.Mentally retracing a sequence of past events or actions
in order to aid memory of something that happened, or to
remember when you last had something you have now lost,
and where you might have left it.
18. Alarm clock/radio (for waking up only).
19. Cooking timer with alarm or bell (for cooking purposes
only).
20. Does your watch have an alarm system? (Yes/No)
21. Alarm clock/watch/radio/timer for purposes other than
waking or cooking.
-21a. Specify type(s) of alarm apparatus used.
-21b.Specify what you use the alarm to remind you of.
22. The peg method. Before this method can be used, the
learner has to learn to associate a word with each number up
to, say, 50-e.g., "one is a bun; two is a shoe; three is a tree;
...." Once this has been learned, lists of items may be remembered
in the following way. The first is imagined or associated
in some way with "bun," the second with "shoe," and so on.
23. Turning numbers into letters (e.g., for telephone num-
bers).
24. Memos (e.g., writing yourself special notes).
-24a. Specify type of memo.
25. Face-name association. A mnemonic for learning people's
names is to change their names into something meaningful and
then to look for an unusual feature of their faces and then to
associate the two; e.g., red-bearded Mr. Hiles may be imagined
with hills growing out of his beard.
26. Alphabetical searching. When trying to recall a name or
word, one can go through the alphabet letter by letter to find
the initial letter; e.g., "Does his name begin with A ... B ... ah
yes, C! It's Clark."
27_Calendar/yearplanner/wall chart.
-27a. Specify how used.
28. Asking someone else to remind you.
29. Leaving something in a special place so that it will be
encountered at the time it needs to be remembered.
30. Other idiosyncratic external memory aids, e.g., knotted
handkerchief, changing rings to unfamiliar positions on fingers,
turning wristwatch to underside of wrist.
-30a. Specify aids used.
31. Other methods of committing things to memory.
- 31a. Please describe these clearly.
32. Other methods of retrieving things from memory.
- 32a. Please describe these clearly.
The external aids in the list came from two sources: first,
external aids, which the interviewer judged a priori as being used
in everyday life and had been used in the pilot questionnaire
study, and second, external aids mentioned by subjects in the
pilot study in response to a question about other aids they used.
With internal aids it was more difficult to know which to
include. Some schemes, such as one that leads to clustering in
free recall of categorized lists, appear to be widely used and
MEMORY AIDS PEOPLE USE 33
groups. The second subsection reports briefly on the
responses to questions in the other parts of the interview.
Discussion of the possible discrepancy between
reported frequency of use and actual frequency of use
is left for the final section, which includes discussion
of some more general problems of subjective assessment
of memory phenomena.
Frequency of Use
Responses to items in the second and principal part
of the interview will be reported separately for the two
studies and for the three types of item (specific external,
specific internal, and general open-ended); comparisons
will be made where appropriate.
Questions on specific items. There were nine items
concerning specific external memory aids (use of an
alarm for waking up is excluded, as it is not considered
to be use of a memory aid) and nine concerning specific
internal aids. The bar charts in Figure 1show the reported
frequency of use for these aids in the first study (the
lowest frequency external and internal aids are not
included but are reported below). The abscissa in each
bar chart represents the level of use of an aid; the
ordinate represents the number of students, out of a
total of 30, who claimed to use it at a particular level.
The top row shows the eight reportedly most used
external aids, and the bottom row shows the equivalent
internal aids. Both rows have the more frequently used
aids on the left, although the categories used and distributions
found do not allow perfect ordering. As regards
the least used internal aid, turning numbers into letters,
none of the students reported ever having used it. The
response frequencies for the least used external aid, use
of an alarm fat purposes other than cooking or waking,
were (left-to-right ordering, as in Figure 1) 24, 5, 0,
0,1,0, and O.
The most apparent observation is how few of the
internal aids were reported to be in frequent use, despite
the fact that one might expect students to be among the
most frequent users of these mnemonics. Interestingly,
the two internal aids reported to be used most, mental
retracing of events or actions and alphabetical searching,
are rather different from the other aids in the study.
They are both pure retrieval strategies, in that no special
encoding effort needs to have been made in order to use
them. The other internal aids the students were asked
about provide schemes for encoding or learning. It is
mainly these schemes that have been investigated, and
yet they are seldom used.
This preference among internal aids for retrieval
strategies over schemes for learning or encoding may
reflect a higher probability of usefulness for the retrieval
strategies. Learning and encoding schemes must be
employed before the user even knows whether "normal"
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KEY 3-2 OR LESS TIMES IN LAST 2 WEEkS; .=t3 TO5 TIMES IN LAST :2WEEkS; 5- 6 TO 10 Tltwt£S IN l, ...ST 2 WEEkS;
6=f1 OR MORE TIUES IN LAST 2 wEEkS
Figure 1. Reported frequency of use of memory aids by students (N = 30). The vertical scale is the number of students in
each category 0 to 6.
34 HARRIS
unaided memory would be sufficient, and he may,
therefore, be wasting time and effort. Artificial retrieval
strategies, on the other hand, need only be employed
when it is already known that normal methods have
failed.
A comparable though more extreme pattern of results
emerged in the study of 30 female Cambridge subjects.
The equivalent frequencies for this group are given in
Figure 2. Again the external aids were reported to be
used more than the internal ones, and the most used
internal aids were the pure retrieval strategies.
The most obvious difference between Figures 1 and 2
is the far greater reported use of diaries and (writing on)
calendars by the Cambridge women (Mann-Whitney
Z values were 2.04, p < .05, and 5.13, p < .0001,
respectively; all Z values in this section are corrected for
ties, and p values are two-tailed). They also made more
use of shopping lists (Z = 3.55, p < .001) and alarm
cooking timers (Z = 3.18, p < .01) than did the students.
Since half the students were male and all the Cambridge
subjects were female, a sex difference in the use of aids
could have contributed to these differences between the
two studies. This interpretation receives some support
from a comparison of the female and male students'
use of external aids. Of the eight external aids shown in
Figure 1, seven were reported to be used more by female
than by male students, although in only one case
(memos) did this reach two-tailed significance on a
Mann-Whitney Utest [U(l5,15)=64, p<.05]. This
suggestion of a sex difference in the use of external aids
by students, whose life-style of lectures, private study,
social and recreational activities is not so heavily sexdependent
as among most other adult groups, led to
additional questions being asked in the second study
about the role of remembering birthdays and social
events, the responses to which are reported below.
The different pattern of use of external aids in the
two studies may also have had a life-style or age component,
independent of any sex difference. A comparison
of the 15 female students with the 30 Cambridge
women shows the older group reported more use of
shopping lists (Mann-Whitney Z = 2.68, p < .01), writing
on calendars (Z = 4.00, P < .0001), and alarm cooking
timers (Z = 2.67, p < .01). The older group also declared
less use of writing on their hands as a reminder than did
the female students (Z = 2.45, p < .025).
Open-ended questions. The general, open-ended
questions asked at the end of the main section produced
rather low-frequency responses, only 31% of the total
180 (3 questions X 60 subjects), eliciting any use of
other aids at all. Even among these the frequency of use
was still usually rated as very low.
The first of these questions (Number 30) was about
other external aids and gave as examples knotted hand-
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6=11 OR MORE TIMES IN LAST 2 WEEKS.
Figure 2. Reported frequency of use of memory aids by female Cambridge Panel subjects (N = 30). The vertical scale is the
number of subjects in each category 0 to 6.
MEMORY AIDS PEOPLE USE 35
Southampton 5 19 5
Cambridge 13 7 6
Table 3
Number of Subjects Mentioning at Least One Memory Aid in
Response to a Question About Aids not Already Mentioned
Note-Each figure is from a total of 30 subjects. Question 30 =
other external aids; Question 31 = other methods ofcommitting
things to memory; Question 32 = other methods of retrieving
things from memory.
kerchiefs, changing rings to unfamiliar positions on
fingers, and turning a wristwatch to the underside of
wrist. These examples are aids that are purely symbolic
in the sense that they are not themselves the things that
need to be remembered. This is in contrast, for example,
with leaving a library book in an unusual place in order to
remember to return the book itself to the library; this
type of aid is covered by Question 29. Symbolic aids
may be very bizarre and idiosyncratic, since they have
no logical connection with what they are being used to
remember, and, presumably, the more outrageous the
misplacement or distortion, the greater the chance that
it will be noticed. However, such symbolic external
aids may be less effective than ones clearly related to
what needs to be remembered. I have described elsewhere
(Harris, 1978) some criteria for the effectiveness
of cues provided by external memory aids. For example,
an effective cue should be a specific reminder for the
action required; in contrast, a symbolic aid such as a
knotted handkerchief may only remind its user that
something must be remembered but not what that
something is. Interestingly, only one Southampton
student and five Cambridge subjects reported ever having
used a knotted handkerchief, and all six rated it in
the lowest usage category, less than three times in the
last 6 months. The failure of symbolic aids to satisfy the
specificity criterion makes the limited reported use less
surprising.
A breakdown by question and study of the three
general open-ended questions is given in Table 3. On
Question 31, more students than Cambridge panel
subjects gave examples of other methods they had used
of committing things to memory, [x2
(1) =8.21,
p <.01]. This presumably reflects students' need to
remember lectures and to review for examinations.
This was often made explicit in their answers (e.g.,
"Making notes actually helps me remember for exams").
On the other hand, for Question 30 significantly more of
the panel subjects gave examples of other external aids
they had used [X2(1)
=3.88, p < .05].
Among the internal methods mentioned by the
Cambridge subjects in response to the open-ended questions
were some shopping mnemonics. One of these
methods was to remember the total number of items to
be bought, as well as what they are. This ensures that
one does not terminate the shopping trip too early,
leaving some items unbought, and also allows one to
make a confident decision to go home when the right
number of items has been bought. The second shopping
mnemonic mentioned was a pure retrieval one. It consists
of imagining the contents of the bread bin, the
larder, the refrigerator, and so on, as last seen, in order
to remember how empty they were. This can then be
used as a basis for what needs to be bought. It is clearly
related to the method of loci, although that involves
encoding by imagining things in places where they have
never been and so is not a pure retrieval method. There
are also other related shopping mnemonics, such as mentally
running through a checklist of items ("Have I got
any bread, butter, eggs, ... ?") or meals ("Have I got
something for lunch tomorrow, dinner on Saturday,
... ?"); both these versions were mentioned by a third
Cambridge subject.
Frequency of use and other studies. Subjects have
also been questioned about the use of memory aids in
other studies. Gruneberg (1973) found that some
53% of graduates who returned a questionnaire reported
having used mnemonics (at least "rarely") to remember
information from essays while preparing for psychology
final examinations.
The first of three relevant questions that Kreutzer
et aI. (1975) asked children concerned what methods
they could think of that would ensure that they would
remember to take their skates to school the next day.
The second was a similar question about remembering a
friend's party. The third question, concerning a friend
trying to work out the age of his dog, was about what
he could do to help himself remember which Christmas
he had received the puppy.
Kreutzer et a!. (1975) categorized the methods given
by the children as being either "inner" or "outer,"
a distinction similar to the one made between internal
and external aids in this paper. The three questions all
produced far more outer than inner methods as responses
from the children in all four age groups (approximately
6, 7, 9, and 11 years). The ratios of outer to inner
methods given as responses by all 80 subjects were 98 : 14
for the first question described above, 97: 24 for the
second, and 62: 27 for the third.
Perlmutter's (1978) battery of objective and subjective
assessments included questions on memory strategy
use. Her subject groups were defmed by age (means =
23 vs. 62 years), education, and sex. Unfortunately,
Perlmutter gave no details of how responses were categorized
or scored. She merely stated, "Most subjects
reported that they often used memory strategies. For
example, they reported using appointment books and
shopping lists, and said they deliberately tried to relate
information they wanted to remember to other information
they thought would increase the probability
that it would be remembered. An analysis of variance of
3231
Question
30
Subject
Group
36 HARRIS
Note-Each figure is from a total of30 subjects.
Southampton 23 12 3
Cambridge 28 21 21
Table 5
Ownership During Current Year of Diaries, Calendars,
and Dated Planners or Wall Charts
composite scores of memory strategy use failed, however,
to reveal any systematic group differences in
overall strategy use" (Perlmutter, 1978, pp. 335-336).
SOME PROBLEMS IN SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT
OF MEMORY PHENOMENA
While laboratory studies have produced objective
data concerning whether particular memory aids can be
used effectively, they can tell us nothing about what
aids people actually do use to cope with their normal
memory loads. Adequate theory and understanding in
any area of memory and cognition must take account
not only of what people can do but also of what they
actually do in normal situations. While objective data on
what people normally do is hard to obtain, a number of
recent investigations into memory and related topics
have used a variety of self-report methods. These include
questionnaires (e.g., Herrmann & Neisser, 1978;
Perlmutter, 1978; Broadbent, Note 2), diaries (e.g.,
Reason, 1976), and structured interviews (e.g., the
present studies).
The Problem of Validation
When subjective methods are used for monitoring
remembering and forgetting in the real world, it is
tempting to quote, by way of validation (as do Herrmann
& Neisser, 1978) studies that have shown a close relationship
between actual performance and knowledge
of (or belief or confidence in) that performance. This
work includes the "feeling of knowing" (Hart, 1965),
"sense of direction" (Kozlowski & Bryant, 1977), and
the often found correlation of confidence with being
correct in, for example, recognition experiments. Perhaps
the most important in the present context is the
work on metamemory by Flavell and others (see Flavell
& Wellman, 1977). This work has started to map out the
developmental changes in children's knowledge about
remembering, showing, for example, the increasing
accuracy with which they can predict their memory
performance in different situations (e.g., Flavell,
Friedrichs, & Hoyt, 1970; Markman, 1973; Yussen
& Levy, 1975). The metamemory of adults has received
less direct attention. However, the oldest groups in some
of the developmental studies have been young adults
(e.g., 21 years, Salatas & Flavell, 1976; 20 years, Yussen
& Levy, 1975). These experimental groups have shown
that adults do have considerable and often accurate
information about their memories and knowledge about
strategies for remembering.
Despite these studies we do not yet know what are
the boundaries within which subjective data are reasonably
accurate. What is known is that some situations
lie outside these boundaries. Consider, for example,
a study by Wilkins and Baddeley (1978). Subjects were
instructed to operate a button on a small box at four
fixed times each day; a clock system inside the box
recorded the time on each occasion the button was
pushed. Wilkins and Baddeley found that when people
forgot to push the button, they often forgot to record
this forgetting, although they had been instructed to
Dated
Planner or
WallChart
27 1
19 10
Wife's Joint
Role Responsibility
Date-
Only
Calendar
1
o
Diary
Husband's
Role
Subject
Group
Question
Birthdays
Social Events
Table 4
Responses to Questions on Whose Role It Is Within the (Female)
Respondents' Families to Remember Oose Friends' and
Relatives' Birthdays and Social Events
Such as a Meal With Friends
Additional Questions
None of the 60 subjects reported ever having bought
a book about memory improvement; 4 reported having
read such a book, and another 16 reported having read
passages of similar advice in a book or magazine or
having heard it broadcast.
Responses to the questions (only asked the Cambridge
subjects) about the role of remembering birthdays and
social events are shown in Table 4. They show that the
wives overwhelmingly regarded these tasks as their role.
Responses to questions on ownership of diaries, calendars,
and wall charts are shown in Table 5. The
wider ownership of these aids among the Cambridge
subjects is in accordance with the more frequent usage
these subjects reported.
In the final section of the interview, subjects were
asked how they would set about remembering a number
of things and how likely they would be to remember
them. Often, subjects gave replies such as "I would just
try to remember" and could not explain how. Another
problem was multiple replies, such as "I might write it
down, in which case I would remember, or I might just
commit it to memory, in which case I would probably
forget." Therefore, the answers to these questions
cannot be used to present a fair comparison of the use
of different memory aids. However, they did in many
cases provide a consistency check against the main
section questions. This is discussed below.
Note-Rows sum to 29 because one of the two unmarried
subjects was unable to respond. The other unmarried subject
responded on the basis of her arrangements with her fiance;
similarly, the widowed subject responded on the basis of her
arrangements with her late husband.
make a note of it when they realized they had forgotten.
Another example is provided by Warrington and Sanders
(1971). Although old people report that they can recall
distant memories better than recent ones, some objective
tests show the opposite trend. These examples
illustrate the dangers of inductive validation.
Reliability and Intennethod Checks
Despite the problems encountered in attempting to
validate subjective memory assessment, there are data
checking procedures whose positive outcome is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for an assessment to be
valid. One commonly used check is that of test-retest
reliability (e.g, Herrmann & Neisser, 1978). However,
this cannot show up consistent distortions produced by
a particular method of assessment. Such a distortion was
revealed to have occurred in the questionnaire that was
used as a pilot for the interview studies reported in this
paper.
In the pilot questionnaire, Southampton University
students (26 students returned the questionnaire out of
50 who received it) were asked how often they used
different sorts of memory aids, using the response
categories never, rarely, sometimes, and often. However,
the results seemed to indicate that the scale might be
producing a range effect and that, for example, subjects
rated once a week as rare for a diary, but as often for
first-letter mnemonics. In the main studies, therefore, a
more objective (7-point) scale was used, with points such
as "up to twice in the last 6 months" being less open to
varying interpretation. The results (see Figure 1) confirmed
the earlier suspicion that in the pilot study the
response category labels had allowed a substantial range
effect, eliminating the frequency differences between
internal and external aids that successfully emerged in
the main study.
This throws doubt on comparisons between items
that have been rated on frequency scales with points
such as "sometimes" or "often." For example, Herrmann
and Neisser (1978) used the points "never," "once in a
while," "now and then," "about half the time," "fairly
often," "very often," and "always." Most of the questions
were about forgetting things in particular situations.
As well as being open to the type of range effect mentioned
above, this scale confounds the frequency of the
situation with the frequency of forgetting given the
situation: The fourth and seventh points on the scale
seem to indicate relative frequency (i.e., frequency of
forgetting with respect to possible situations), whereas
the second, third, fifth, and sixth points seem to indicate
absolute frequency (i.e., frequency of forgetting with
respect to time); "never" can obviously refer to either
relative or absolute frequency.
Returning to the inability of test-retest procedures
to show up consistent distortions produced by a particular
method, it is obviously advantageous to perform a
within-study, intermethod check; then not only statistical
results can be cross-checked, but also raw data from
individual protocols. This was attempted in the present
MEMORYAIDS PEOPLE USE 37
studies by not only asking subjects what memory aids
they used, but also including a subsequent section with
questions on how they would cope with certain everyday
memory situations. Sometimes it turned out in the
responses to the latter questions that the subjects frequently
used aids not mentioned in the earlier section.
For example, it was clear that many of the Cambridge
subjects made extensive use of address books, telephone
books, and birthday books, but among those who declared
use of them in response to the memory situation questions,
very few had mentioned them in response to the
earlier open-ended questions on memory aids, and there
were no specific questions about them. For aids about
which there were specific questions in the first section
(e.g., diaries), such discrepancies hardly occurred. In
other words, if subjects stated that some of the items
asked about in the later section would be remembered
by using a diary, then they had rated a diary as being
used at least fairly often in the earlier section.
Specific vs. General Questions
So it appears that the subjects had some sort of
difficulty in answering the general, open-ended questions
that they did not have when answering specific questions
about individual types of memory aid. It seems likely
that this failure to recall certain much used aids represents
a retrieval failure. In other words a specific question
actually mentioning an aid is a sufficient retrieval
cue for the appropriate information to be accessed,
whereas the generalized question, "What other memory
aids do you use and how often do you use them?"
is not.
This points to two potentially empirical questions.
The first is whether specific questions always lead to
greater consistency (or even validity) than do general
ones. The second question is whether it is possible to
provide some sort of retrieval plan or cues to help
achieve accurate answers to general questions. This
might be done by givingspecific examples of the general
memory phenomenon the question is about (e.g., "How
often do you forget you have already done something
and start to do it again, like winding your watch or
pouring yourself a drink?"). There are obvious dangers
in such a technique. Assuming for the moment that
general questions are difficult to answer and specific
ones easier, the respondent may answer the question as
if it were "How often do you pour yourself a drink
twice?" and go no further than the given examples in
thinking of situations in which he attempts to do things
twice. Additionally, such specific questions may not
apply to a particular respondent-he may never need to
wind his watch. Questions of exactly the sort exemplified
have been asked in recent studies (e.g., Herrmann
& Neisser, 1978; Question 15).
An alternative approach to overcoming retrieval
problems in general questions is that used by Sunderland,
Harris, and Baddeley (Note 3). One part of a battery of
tests and questions used in a study of closed head injury
and memory was the use of a special "diary." Every
38 HARRIS
evening for I week the subjects went through a checklist
of possible memory failures that they might have suffered
during the day. Restricting the target period of
search in this way may alleviate the retrieval problem,
first, because it is a small, well defined area to search,
and second, because, since the events are recent, they
may be more accessible.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Finally, a caveat should be added to the finding that
the external aids were reported to be used more than the
internal ones. In the Method section of this paper, it was
explained that there is no clear division between internal
memory aids and normal remembering, so that the
internal aids specifically mentioned in the interview
studies were chosen from the psychological literature on
memory aids. It may be that psychologists have not
chosen to investigate or mention the most commonly
used internal aids: Had there been specific questions on
other internal methods of remembering, such as the
shopping mnemonics mentioned in the Results section,
the results might have been rather different.
One might even choose to differentiate internal
memory aids and normal remembering schemes on the
basis of frequency of use itself. The complex semantic,
episodic, working, and other memory processes upon
which cognitive functioning depends presumably represent
normal memory, but, in contrast with the classical
mnemonics, the rememberer cannot report on their
frequency of use. However, the dependence of momentto-moment
functioning upon these processes leads to the
inevitable conclusion that, whatever may be the case
with aids, internal methods of remembering far outstrip
external ones in frequency of use.
REFERENCE NOTES
I. Higbee, K. L. A century of research on mnemonics: We're
back where we started. Paper presented at the meeting of the
Western Psychology Association, Los Angeles, April 1976.
2. Broadbent, D. E. The Cognitive Failure Questionnaire (CFQ).
In J. E. Harris (Convener), Assessment ofcognitive functioning in
everydaylife. Symposium presented at the Conference of the British
Psychological Society, London, 1979.
3. Sunderland, A., Harris, J. E., & Baddeley, A. D. Everyday
memory following closed head injury. Manuscript in prepara-
tion.
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NOTE
1. North American readers should note that in Britain an
appointment book is called a diary (the word diary was used
with this meaning throughout the study) and that the total
number of such diaries published annually in the United
Kingdom is about 20 million.
(Received for publication June 7, 1979;
revision accepted October 12, 1979.)