ABSTRACT
In traditional experimental psychology one of the principal goals of memory research has been to discover the quantitative laws that govern the performance of memory. A universal learning or forgetting curve may be seen as an ideal objective aimed at by researchers who are studying retention of words or letter strings in memory or learning of simple sensory-motor skills. The many stochastic learning models (e.g., Bush & Mosteller, 1955) published in the fifties and early sixties reflect only one facet of this general trend.
