First Books On Human Memory
There were two early scientific works on human memory:
- One is the work of Ebbinghaus entitled Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, written in 1885. It is a giant in the field of memory because it opened the topic as an experimental science and, for that reason, towers high in the history of psychology.
- The other is Bartlett's book Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, written in 1932, which attempted an experimental understanding of the retention of behavior far more complex than the comparatively simple rote verbal responses which Ebbinghaus sought to understand.
Early laboratory studies before 1953 are inadequate by modern standards of experimental design and controls. Research on memory has taken large steps in recent years, and our present understanding has reached heights beyond all expectation that a prophet of, say, 1950 might have had.
Other important early work in psychology includes:
- clinical, nonexperimental observations on the psychopathology of memory (Freud, 1943).
- Physiological psychologists, in their search for the brain locus of memory, use animals in their work and have been minor exceptions to this trend (e.g., Lashley, 1950; Thompson, 1965), although their work is yet to have an impact on behavior theory.
- modern theories of learning and perception (Osgood, 1953; Kimble, 1961; Melton, 1964; Hall, 1966; Hilgard & Bower, 1966; Underwood, 1966).
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