Thinking About Human Memory

Embedded in a historical context, this is a novel approach to memory involving goals, cues, information, opportunity to learn, and noise.

Michael S. Humphreys (Author), Kerry A. Chalmers (Author)

9781107451926, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 December 2017

237 pages, 8 b/w illus. 17 tables
23 x 15.4 x 1.5 cm, 0.36 kg

'Humphreys and Chalmers's stimulating book sets out a novel and ambitious approach to thinking about human memory.' Kourken Michaelian, American Journal of Psychology

Thinking About Human Memory provides a novel analytical approach to understanding memory that considers the goals of the memory task, the cues and information available, the opportunity to learn, and interference from irrelevant information (noise). Each of the five chapters describing this approach introduces historical ideas and demonstrates how current thinking both differs from and is derived from them. These chapters also contain analyses of current problems designed to demonstrate the power of the approach. In a subsequent chapter, the authors discuss how memory is controlled by the environment, by others, and by ourselves, and then apply their insights to the problem solving of children, our hominin ancestors, and scrub jays. Finally, the questions of how to define episodic memory and how to investigate phylogenetic and developmental changes in memory are addressed. This book will appeal to memory researchers, including applied researchers, and advanced students.

1. Overview of how to analyze memory tasks
2. Analysing the goals of a task
3. The importance of thinking about cues and targets
4. Theoretical analyses involving the use of information and its complexity
5. Opportunity for learning
6. The discrimination problems posed by different memory tasks
7. Controlling human memory
8. Episodic memory
9. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Memory [JMRM], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Child & developmental psychology [JMC]