ABSTRACT
In February of 1966 I had a short, but significant conversation with Dr. Paivio. As a new recruit to the discipline of psychology, coming from a mathematics undergraduate degree, I was in the throes of grappling with the emerging dual-coding theory. When Al was finally able to drum his ideas into my thick skull I was still struck with a sense of incompleteness. I felt that something was missing in this evolving view of the human cognitive machine, but wasn’t really able to articulate what it was. With some trepidation I approached Al and tried to voice my concerns. We talked for a while and several points emerged from our conversation. The general conclusion was that the emotional aspects of memory were not currently part of the theory, and that this might be a next step in its development once the imaginal and verbal codes had been sorted out. More specifically, three points were made: (1) It is certainly conceivable that there may be more than two codes, and that the choice to consider only two at that point was more a matter of convenience than being fact-based. (2) The idea of emotions or feelings being part of the model is clearly needed, as these were not directly addressed in the formulation. (3) It is possible that one could look at emotion as a “third code,” acting in a similar interactive way with the other two codes, obeying its own rules, and adding the things I thought were missing from the then-new dual-coding formulation. I left the meeting feeling a lot better about the research enterprise, and with the distinct feeling that emotion was going to emerge as a central construct in cognitive work generally—if not specifically in Paivio’s work.
