ABSTRACT
Advances in the understanding of memory over the past few decades have typically incorporated the notion of storage in terms of functionally distinct but interconnected stores which are seen to underpin the phenomena of remembering. Each of these stores, or modules, has associated with it a distinct form of representation that constrains the way in which material within a module may be addressed, retrieved, or interfered with. Limitations on the storage and processing capacity of such modules is also usually specified. Implicit or explicit within many of these modular approaches is the notion of a fractionation between storage and perceptual processes (see e.g. Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). Thus, stores may be long-term or short-term, they may be associated with each of the senses, or more abstractly, may be devoted to verbal or spatial information that transcends the senses. The concepts described in this chapter are contrary to this tradition and involve an approach to understanding memory as a set of procedures or operations taking place within a unitary rather than a modular system, many of which are intrinsically connected to what are usually considered to be more peripheral perceptual processes.
