ABSTRACT

Experimental studies of memory during the last century marked a major advance in the history of the science of psychology. In 1885, H. Ebbinghaus began publishing his results in the field of memory. His main aim throughout his investigations was based on the following goal: to separate memorizing from every influence of sense or meaning and to analyze how the “senseless items” are retained, preserved, and retrieved. Starting with this as his major goal, Ebbinghaus piloted a long series of psychological investigations by doing a careful, detailed analysis of the basic problems relating to learning, retention, and retrieval. He avoided the aspect of the “senseful” organization of these processes. In a similar vein, even in behavioristic science involving “conditioning” and “learning” principles, this basic trend of studying the mechanisms of “memory traces” was pursued with great interest.