ABSTRACT
The individual patterns of performance described are fascinating and taken together demonstrate the richness of the memory system. Focusing on HM’s contribution to memory research provides a limited view of how case studies have contributed to the literature. It is common to think that the major contribution of case study research is limited to exploratory or inductive research, rather than hypothesis-driven or deductive research. A critique of the role that single case neuropsychology plays in contemporary cognitive science has come from computational modelers, who claim that that data generated by these studies are too coarse-grained to inform the richer theories about cognition that computational models have provided. Much of this argument rests on the idea that single cases can only provide dissociations. The case for single case neuropsychology is made pragmatically, demonstrating time and time again how valuable these cases have actually been, not focusing on whether they could be valuable in theory.
