ABSTRACT

When we “remember” what exactly is it that we remember? It seems an obvious thing to say that when we memorise an object we do not store the object itself in our heads—we store a representation of that object, in other words a memory trace. As we saw in Chapter 1, information processing systems operate by deriving codes. A telephone message involves the translation of a voice into a series of electrical impulses which are then decoded by the receiver. So, in the same way, memory involves deriving a code from information we are asked to remember, and then decoding that representation when we wish to recall.