ABSTRACT
For over a century, psychologists have amassed empirical research on phenomena that can be labeled “memory.” For better or worse, the constraints on the phenomena that are labeled “memory” are as broad as the wide boundaries that define the term in standard lexical use, which has a wide enough focus to include memory process, content, and product. Leading theoreticians have long recognized the need to parse memory into specific constructs. Efforts to organize the abundance of potentially relevant empirical phenomena that could be called memory have not generated an inclusive overarching taxonomy but have at least provided many meaningful dimensions and distinctions. For example, if memory is defined as a process, theoretical accounts suggest that the process must include sub-processes that support representation, storage, and retrieval. Or, if memory is defined as the specific content of the information stored, we know that there is some utility in distinguishing between stored information that is more or less a direct representation of the event (i.e., episodic memory) and stored information that describes or categorizes the event (i.e., semantic memory). Finally, if memory refers to the duration of storage, there is an obvious distinction between information stored briefly and then discarded versus information stored for a long period of time. Obvious? Well, not exactly. The leitmotif of this chapter is that researchers who study short-term memory are focusing on several different processes and that any hope of a cumulative science of memory development requires that we pay more attention to specific procedures of measurement and the extent to which our constructs are yoked to these procedures.
