ABSTRACT
Psychology.—In cognitive psychology, the concept of memory pertains to mental states that carry information, whereas learning refers to the transition from one mental state to another (→LEARNING, INFORMATION). In everyday usage, the term memory seems to evoke a single information storage mechanism, yet in psychology research on memory has found evidence of a wide variety of mental representations and processes (→REPRESENTATION). Several distinctions are generally made in memory research, although recent theoretical advances relating to brain-activation phenomena argue in favor of a structural unity that overarches this functional variety.
