ABSTRACT
Concern for the practical aspects of memory can be traced back at least as far as Bartlett’s (1932) critique of Ebbinghaus (1885). As we all know, Ebbinghaus had hoped to do for memory and the other higher mental processes what Fechner (I860) had done for sensation and the lower ones (frankly, I loathe these terms, because they perpetuate what I consider a false distinction, but they do provide a convenient shorthand). By his invention of the nonsense syllable, and his enforcement of what Bartlett (1932, p. 8) called “a perfectly automatic attitude of repetition in the learner,” Ebbinghaus hoped to prove Kant wrong, and to show that the mind could in fact be studied with the tools of modern science. And to some extent, he was successful. The establishment of what amount to psychological laws of repetition and decay was quite an achievement for 1885.
