ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with remembering. The specific topic is not so much when remembering is most likely to occur or when it is not, but rather, how it proceeds. I suggest that one clue toward determining how remembering proceeds is found in its consequences. Throughout the history of the science of learning and retention, the basic consequence of remembering that has been of singular concern is the concurrent, or immediately subsequent, overt behavior measured to infer remembering. In this chapter, I focus instead on how characteristics of the animal’s representation of a previous episode (i.e., the memory), change when that episode is remembered. I argue that the processes engaged when an animal initially represents an episode as a memory (“memory storage”) are much the same as those operating when a stored memory is made active (“memory retrieval”). This leads to the prediction that variables introduced at the time of memory retrieval will have the same effect on later retention as when these variables are introduced at the time of memory storage. Finally, I suggest that phenomena of conditioning and learning currently explained in terms of mechanisms operating at the time of memory storage (e.g., latent inhibition, blocking) may in fact be due to mechanisms that act on memory retrieval.
