ABSTRACT
The processes of learning and memory in animals would, on the face of it, appear to be closely related. No subject will show the benefits of learning unless it can remember between trials what it has learned, and the memory of what has happened within a trial will presumably determine the course of learning itself. In fact, one could define learning as the encoding of information into memory. Yet, as Bolles (1976) has pointed out, students of learning have “gained very little from the work of their colleagues studying memory (p. 24).” He suggests that “The investigation of memory has produced many conceptual tools that could be of great value in working out a better understanding of learning in particular and behavior in general (p. 25).” In this essay I will try to show that Bolles’ remarks were appropriate and prophetic.
