Chapter 1 Chapter Summary

Chapter Overview:

The goal of Chapter 1 is to define memory from various perspectives and explain the numerous forms of memory. To do this properly, it is important to review the history of memory research from the earliest documentation to present day.

Memory cannot be understood as one concept. Instead we need to view memory as a guide to behaviour, a body of knowledge, an ability, and as a biological construct. It must also be noted that memory is not learning; learning is a process while memory is what was processed.

Memory can be divided into short-term memory (memory of what you are currently processing) and long-term memory (all of the memories stored and potentially able to bring into short-term memory). Long-term memories can be further subdivided into the neurologically distinct systems of implicit and explicit memory. Implicit memory occurs outside of our conscious awareness while explicit memories occur within our conscious awareness.

Because of the intrinsic importance of memory, it has been conceptualized and studied for all our recorded history. The ancient Greeks and Egyptians had deities dedicated to memory. The great philosophers, Plato and Aristotle proposed the first known theories of memory. Plato’s theory described memory metaphorically as a wax tablet where memories were encoded. Aristotle used a basic scientific method to study memory and concluded that memories are associated with other memories. In this way, recalling a memory would trigger the recollection of all things associated with that memory. This associationist view of memory would continue to be studied and eventually found to be accurate.

In those early times, public figures gave long speeches and often utilized the still popular mnemonic the method of loci. This mnemonic relied on visualizing what you want to remember on various places in a well-known location.

After the Fall of Rome, Christianity dictated that the quest for knowledge outside of religious contemplation was a sin and the study of memory stayed on hold until the age of Enlightenment. It was during this time in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that philosophers like Hobbes, Hume, and Locke revived and expanded the view that memories were connected and strengthened through associations.

Darwin’s theory of evolution was the turning point in the study of the human mind because it allowed it to be perceived as biological and, therefore, possible to research. Probably the most influential of the subsequent explorations was Hermann Ebbinghaus’s empirical work supporting the associationists’ views and discovering a number of theories on memory such as the learning curve, the effects of distributed versus massed practice, and the forgetting curve, all of which are still supported today.

Over the next 80 years, memory research was dominated by three research traditions: verbal learning in the United States, Gestalt in Europe and schema in Britain. Verbal learning was influenced by the domination of behaviourism in the US during that time. It focused simply on how memory-related behaviour could be modified without creating any models on the internal structures of memory. On the other hand, Gestalt psychology in Germany focused on how our internal representations of information influenced memory. In 1930s Britain, Frederic Bartlett developed the concept of schemas (cognitive frameworks to help organize and interpret information). He theorized that we only encode part of the material we are learning or experiencing and, instead rely on schemas to fill in the gaps.

Early work in neuroscience has also affected our understanding memory. Most influential were theories about the localization of function, the conceptualization of an engram (a hypothetical neurological change in the brain after learning), Hebb’s two-step process of memory consolidation, and Penfield’s map of the human brain.

The cognitive revolution in the late 1950s ended the reign of behaviourism and started a new era of research that allowed investigations into mental events. The growth of cognitive psychology was paralleled by advances in computer technology and thus, the computer was often used as an analogy to human processing.

Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) modal model of memory provided an enduring guideline for thinking about and studying memory. The modal model consists of sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. It also focused on the control processes that move information from one memory store to another.

The development of memory was strengthened by the advances of neuroscience. The assumption that there are distinct types of memory (e.g., short-term vs. long-term memory; or semantic vs. episodic) gained credibility with the evidence that these memory systems were physiologically separate.

Another significant influence in our understanding of memory was the triarchic model proposed by Endel Tulving (1972). Tulving believed that procedural, episodic, and semantic memory corresponded with different types of conscious awareness.

Evidence in 1986 provided support for the distinction between implicit and explicit memory that stimulated a flood of new research in the area.

A focus on applied memory research appeared in the late 1970s and included testing existing models in the world outside the laboratory.

Three theoretical approaches to memory have been debated. Do we study memory from a systems approach (where memory consists of various distinct systems) or from a processing approach (where the focus is how processing affects the memory trace)? Another alternative approach is the principles approach, which concentrates on the commonalities from the empirical evidence regardless of the system or the type of processing. This textbook suggests an integrated view of all these approaches gives students the best understanding of what is currently known about human memory.

A basic overview of neuroscience is essential to understanding more detailed presentations of the neuroscience of memory. Long-term potentiation (LTP) is the strengthening of a neural connection from repeated activity. LTP is essential in memory. While most of the brain is important in some way to memory, the medial temporal lobe which includes the hippocampus, is essential in the formation and maintenance of memories.

Learning Objectives:

Having read this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

1. Compare and contrast different definitions of the term memory.
2. Explain how Plato, Aristotle, and the associationist philosophers viewed memory.
3. Describe how Darwin’s theory of evolution influenced the study of memory.
4. Describe Ebbinghaus’s method for studying memory.
5. Compare and contrast early memory research in North America, Europe, and Britain.
6. Explain how the cognitive turn influenced the study of memory.
7. Compare and contrast the systems view, the processing view, and the principles view of memory.
8. Understand the basics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of memory.