ABSTRACT
The older view about remembering was that it was essentially a reproductive process. This view was largely based on the somewhat arid experiments with nonsense syllables performed by Ebbinghaus 1 and his followers. One object of these experiments was to try to find some unit into which the higher mental processes could be analysed, and the theory of Ebbinghaus was that nonsense syllables would provide such a unit, for, unlike ordinary words, none of them had been associated in the mind with other words, and so they could be regarded as being equivalent. But the effect of this theory was that experiments were performed in highly artificial conditions, and although a number of deductions followed from them, notably in relation to the rapidity with which nonsense syllables were forgotten, there could be no possible justification for applying them to the processes of remembering as they exist in the situations of ordinary life. Remembering may be an essentially reproductive process so far as nonsense syllables are concerned, but what is really rather more important and interesting is to investigate what happens in remembering in less artificial conditions.
