Temporal Codes for Memories: Issues and Problems.

摘要

This report addresses the question of the mechanisms by which order information is attached to memories. The results of sixteen experiments indicate the role of some independent variables on temporal coding in relatively short-term memory and in long-term memory. Several experiments, in which changes in proactive inhibition are used as an index of temporal differentiation show that the nature of the words making up the lists is involved fundamentally in temporal coding. Other experiments demonstrate that, in relatively short-term memory, a subject cannot learn to improve his performance in estimating how far apart in time two events occurred. Still other experiments show that recency judgments for two events improve with practice, but the improvement is minimally influenced by the temporal separation of the events. The context in which memories are established is shown to influence temporal codes only if an ordering metric is a part of the context. Several theoretical propositions are advanced to account for the findings.