ABSTRACT
The work on code design stemming from my PhD project led to an increasing involvement with the largely US-based verbal learning community. It was traditionally rather conservative, focussing on the detailed analysis of a limited number of experimental paradigms and their interpretation in strict stimulus-response terms. By the 1960s however, it began to attract a growing number of investigators who were influenced both by earlier ideas from Gestalt psychology and by later developments from an information- processing viewpoint. Although I could not afford the considerable expense at the time of travelling to North America, I was part of the extended group who exchanged publications and ideas and who eventually decided to set up a journal entitled The Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, which I found a more congenial outlet for publishing than the rather more staid Journal of Experimental Psychology. The Unit had a stream of visitors from North America, many of them with interests in memory, so I felt very much a part of an international group in an exciting area.
