Assessing memory principles in individuals, models, and non-declarative memory

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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 (Roediger, 2008). One reason offered for the absence of general principles is that memory is made up of multiple memory systems, each of which operates according to different rules (Tulving, 1985; Wang Ferbinteanu, 2019). In contrast, we (Surprenant MPLE. SIMPLE (Scale Independent Memory, Perception, and Learning; Brown, Neath, Neath & Brown, 2006) is a memory model that instantiates the relative distinctiveness principle, which states that items will be well remembered to the extent that they are more distinct than competing items at the time of retrieval. These studies will assess whether SIMPLE can explain how individuals perform on memory tasks. Objective 2. Assessing the Redintegration Principle. In the short-term/working memory literature, redintegration is the process whereby individuals use their long-term knowledge to help their recall (Hulme et al., 1991). Redintegration is invoked to explain findings like the word frequency effect (better recall of high than low frequency words) but not the acoustic similarity effect (better recall of dissimilar-sounding than similar-sounding words). The proposed new principle is based on a prediction of the Feature Model (Neath, 2000): Disruptive effects of secondary tasks (such as concurrent articulation) will be observed only when redintegration is not required. Objective 3. Assessing Principles in Non-Declarative Memory. Although most memory research uses verbal stimuli, there is a robust literature on non-verbal and especially non-declarative memory (knowing "how" rather than knowing "that"). However, there has been very little work on examining whether the proposed general principles apply. Tempel and Frings (2013) devised a procedure to examine retrieval induced forgetting of motor movements, and this paradigm will be adapted to assess whether the cue overload and relative distinctiveness principles apply to motor movements. The proposed research is a strong test of whether human memory is better explained by a unitary account in which there exist system-wide principles or by a multi-systems view in which each system operates according to different rules. The questions are important because they address the fundamental nature of human memory.