A study involving a sample of people selected to represent the nonimpaired American population, aged 16 to 74 years, was undertaken to determine the effectiveness of the Wechsler Memory Scale--Revised. The scale's subtests were designed to assess memory of personal and general knowledge, logical memory, verbal paired association, figural memory, visual paired association, visual reproduction, mental control, digit span, visual reproduction, and visual memory span. The sample population on which the study was performed included 50 persons from each of six age groups. Each age group was divided approximately equally by sex and was selected to demographically match the general population. Results indicate that the revision of the memory scale incorporates many features that should help assure its continued place in clinical assessments. These features include up-to-date norms for persons aged 16-74 years, broadened coverage of nonverbal memory, improved scoring criteria for logical memory and visual reproduction, reporting of scores corresponding to verbal and visual memory as well as the attention/concentration factor and delayed recall, guidelines for identifying significant differences between certain subtest indexes, and validity studies of patients in each of several diagnostic categories. (TJH)