Testing system-wide principles of memory

在科学探究的大多数领域，都有一些规律和原则，它们是该领域研究和理论的基础。然而，在人类记忆的研究中，没有什么规律，也没有几条被广泛接受的原则。缺乏规律和原则的一个原因是，记忆不是一个单一的系统。因为每个记忆系统都按照不同的规则运行，所以发现记忆的一般规律或原则是不可能的。最近，我和我的同事认为，记忆的原则确实存在，我们描述了七条原则，不管潜在的假设记忆系统是什么，它们都适用。提出的研究计划的目的是评估从一般原则中得出的新预测，并产生新的原则。将详细考察三个方面。(1)在记忆的大部分区域，有特色的项目（例如，黑字列表中的一个红字）比没有特色的项目更容易被记住。基于独特性的原则的一个问题是，当测试利用内隐记忆时，这种效果不能可靠地观察到。研究人员已经确定了几个“标志性”结果，这些结果表明一个人在某项特定任务中使用了短期记忆。其中一个重要的发现是，将安静控制条件下的记忆与并发发音条件下的记忆进行了比较（大声说一些不相关的东西，比如数字1-5，一遍又一遍地说）。标准观点认为并发发音选择性地影响工作记忆的发音控制过程。相反，本研究将调查不含语音或发音成分的任务是否会产生类似的效应，从而检验一种新的次要任务效应原理。(3)尽管大多数记忆研究使用语言刺激，但关于非语言尤其是程序记忆（即，知道“如何”而不是知道“那”）的文献也很多。然而，程序性记忆的研究范式不利于评估所提出的原则是否适用。研究的第三条线将发展范式来研究被认为是利用程序记忆的任务中的原则，然后将直接比较每个原则在程序和陈述性记忆任务中的适用性。

In most areas of scientific inquiry, there are laws and principles that are the foundation of research and theory within that domain. In the study of human memory, however, there are no laws and few widely-accepted principles. One reason offered for the lack of laws and principles is that memory is not a unitary system. Because each memory system operates according to different rules, discovering general laws or principles of memory is not possible. Recently, my colleagues and I argued that principles of memory do exist and we described seven principles that apply regardless of the underlying hypothetical memory system. The objective of the proposed research program is to evaluate novel predictions derived from the general principles and to generate new principles. Three areas will be examined in detail. (1) In most areas of memory, distinctive items (i.e., a red word in a list of black words) are remembered better than non-distinct items. One problem for a principle based on distinctiveness is that this effect is not reliably observed when tests tap implicit memory. (2) Researchers have identified several 'signature' results that indicate that a person is utilizing short-term memory on a particular task. One key finding compares memory in a quiet control condition to one in which people engage in concurrent articulation (saying some irrelevant items, such as the numbers 1-5, out loud, over and over). The standard view argues that concurrent articulation selectively affects the articulatory control process of working memory. In contrast, the proposed research will investigate whether tasks with no phonological or articulatory component have similar effects, thereby testing a proposed new principle of secondary task effects. (3) Although most memory research uses verbal stimuli, there is a robust literature on non-verbal and especially procedural memory (i.e., knowing "how" as opposed to knowing "that"). The paradigms used to study procedural memory, however, are not conducive to assessing whether the proposed principles apply. The third line of research will develop paradigms for studying principles in tasks thought to tap procedural memory, and will then directly compare the applicability of each principle to procedural and declarative memory tasks.