Memory represents a key psychological process. It allows us to recall things from the past which may have taken place hours, days, months, or even many years ago. Our memories are intrinsically personal, subjective, and internal, yet without the primary capacity of memory, other important activities such as speech, perception, concept formation, and reasoning would be impossible. The range of different aspects of memory is huge, from our vocabulary and knowledge about language and the world to our personal histories, skills such as walking and talking, and the more simple memory capacities fou ... More

Memory represents a key psychological process. It allows us to recall things from the past which may have taken place hours, days, months, or even many years ago. Our memories are intrinsically personal, subjective, and internal, yet without the primary capacity of memory, other important activities such as speech, perception, concept formation, and reasoning would be impossible. The range of different aspects of memory is huge, from our vocabulary and knowledge about language and the world to our personal histories, skills such as walking and talking, and the more simple memory capacities found in lower animals. The principal focus in this volume is the long-term representation of complex associative human memory. This refers to the permanently stored representation of individual items and events. The book presents a debate about the cognitive architecture of the human long-term memory system. Each chapter concentrates on the central theoretical question of how long-term memory can best be conceptualized. In particular, is long-term memory best regarded as comprising multiple independent systems (each with distinct properties and attributes), as a processing framework, which can be tapped via different levels of processing, or as a complex function, which can be used in a flexible and task-appropriate manner?