Everyday Forgetting: Data from a Diary Study

Abstract

50 subjects were asked to keep a diary of instances in which they realized they had forgotten something. The 750 forgettings recorded were grouped on the basis of nominal similarity, with 64% of them falling into one of 24 categories. The major categories included forgetting to comply with requests, failures of habitual actions, absentmindedness, and forgetting to bring something. Most failures involved the forgetting to perform a future action (i.e., forgetting to do something) as opposed to forgetting facts, names, or other information once known. These results suggest that the failure to retrieve the intention to do something at the appropriate time is the source of many forgettings, and this finding may have implications for the construction of memory inventories.