ABSTRACT
The first experimental investigations of memory were carried out by Hermann Ebbinghaus in Germany from 1879 to 1885. Ebbinghaus realized that memory is powerfully affected by meaning and association, and in order to control for these factors, he decided to use words that had no meaning or association. One of Ebbinghaus's major contributions to psychology was to show that a seemingly insoluble problem could be approached experimentally, provided the situation was reduced to a few measurable essentials. There is one major modification that should be added to the general curve of forgetting. For a short period after the initial learning the memory may improve a little rather than decrease. Memory for photographs of faces was found to be best one and a half minutes after the initial viewing. The memory is being integrated and reinforced with other memories, and the unconscious processing adds to the permanence and strength of the record.
