Drawing on recent research in prospective memory and on a much longer history of studies of the basic mechanisms of attention memory, three human factors researchers with the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) offer a general account of the cognitive challenges posed by multi-tasking and why it is error-prone. They argue that forgetting to perform one crucial task among several, often with disastrous consequences, is rarely due to personal failure of the individual who forget; rather it is the outcome of the interaction of the intrinsic nature of human cognitive processes with task demands, an individual's experience, competing goals, and organizational factors. Their case studies come from flight operations. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)