ABSTRACT
It is possible that different forms of human memory are essentially specialised for remembering different kinds of things: e.g. semantic memory for interlinked systems of decontextualised “knowledge”, episodic memory for one-off, temporally organised sequences of events, procedural memory for motor coordination etc. If this is so, then many of the characteristics of these memory systems will have evolved as solutions to the specific problems posed by (i) the conditions under which the target information must be learned, and (ii) the adaptive function of this information, i.e. how the learned information is put to use to guide action and thought. In this paper, we consider the implications of this position for verbal short-term memory.
