ABSTRACT
Memory is an intimate part of who we are. However, despite the fact that it permeates all mental processes (or perhaps because of this), we have little conscious awareness of it. Intuitively, memory seems very ethereal. As described in Chapter 1, for most of history, memory was thought to be beyond objective study. It wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that it became sensible to think about systematically studying memory. Because it is so hard, if not impossible, to get a direct look at memory, we need good indirect methods. These often involve an experimenter manipulating what is to be remembered, recording an act of remembering, and then making inferences about memory based on what is observed. In this chapter we first address what an experiment is and how it compares to other types of data collection. Then we examine various methods of memory research. We first look at learning, followed by some tasks that can be used to test memory contents and structure. Finally, we consider issues of conscious introspections. Along with each method we also look at some basic principles of memory whose discovery can be attributed, at least in part, to the methods being presented. For those interested students, ways of calculating some memory measures, perhaps for a laboratory section or a research project, are provided in the Appendix.
