Memory: Systems, Process, or Function?: (Debates in Psychology)

Memory represents a key psychological process. It allows us to recall things from the past which may have taken place hours, days, months, or even many years ago. Our memories are intrinsically personal, subjective, and internal, yet without the primary capacity of memory, other important activities such as speech, perception, concept formation, and reasoning would be impossible. The range of different aspects of memory is huge, from our vocabulary and knowledge about language and the world to our personal histories, skills such as walking and talking, and the more simple memory capacities found in lower animals. Amongst the diversity of memory processes, the principal focus in this volume is the long-term representation of complex associative human memory. This refers to the permanently stored representation of individual items and events. The books in the Oxford Debates in Psychology series aim to provide students and researchers with a stimulating, self-contained, and balanced summary of the various theoretical and empirical positions that shape the most controversial and contested areas of research. Memory: Systems, Process, or Function? presents a a debate about the cognitive architecture of the human long-term memory system. The individual chapter authors represent some of the leading researchers and theorists in the field. Each chapter concentates upon the central theoretical question of how long-term memory can best be conceptualized. In particular, is long-term memory best regarded as comprising multiple independent systems (each with distict properties and attributes), as a processing framework which can be tapped via different levels of processing, or as a complex fnction which can be used in a flexible and task-appropriate manner? The authors of each chapter present their own answers to this and related research questions. The book concludes with an integrated synopsis and appraisal of the different facets of this fascinating debate.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1: J.K. Foster and M. Jelicic: Memory chapers, procedures, and processes 2: E. Tulving: Study of memory: processes and systems 3: H.L. Roediger, R. Buckner, K.B. McDermott: Components of processing 4: R.M. McDonald, A-M. Ergis, and G. Winocur: Functional dissociation of brain regions in learning and memory: evidence for multiple systems 5: T.A. Blaxton: Combining disruption and activation techniques to map conceptual and perceptual memory processes in the human brain 6: A.R. Mayes: How does the brain mediate our ability to remember? 7: M.S. Weldon: The memory chop shop: issues in the search for memory systems 8: J.D.E. Gabrieli: The architecture of human memory 9: J.P. Toth and R.R. Hunt: Not one versus many, but zero versus any: structure and function in the context of the multiple memory systems debate 10: A.J. Parkin: Component processes versus systems: Is there really an important difference?

About the Author :
Jonathan K. Foster, Department of Psychology, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL email: foster@psy.man.ac.uk Marko Jelicic, Lamarckhof 5-2, 1098 TJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Review :
`Such reading should be of interest to many graduate students as well as active scientists.' European Journal of Cognitive Psychology