ABSTRACT
Writing an essay on the psychophysics of memory is like clearing a doorway in a wall separating adjoining apartments inhabited by Gustav Fechner (1801–1887) and Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) or, given that they actually lived in different cities, perhaps like installing network connectivity between them. Fechner had the idea of examining the relation between the physical world and the psychological effects that result from our experiencing that world; Ebbinghaus had the idea of tracing the diminishing availability of some psychological effects over time (Boring, 1957). Put them together, and you get the concept of exploring the nature of the effects of physical stimuli that persist following the disappearance of the actual stimuli. There were fundamental similarities between Fechner and Ebbinghaus that could assist in this union. For example, both men grasped the potential of systematic research on the human mind and both understood the need to develop research methods that could deal with considerable trial-to-trial variability.
