Biology of Memory

308 Pages·1970·7.369 MB·English

by  Karl Pribram (Eds.)

CONTRIBUTORS
G. G. ARAKELOV BENNET B. MURDOCK, JR.
D. E. BROADBENT P. B. NEVELSKY
J. BURES A. PAKULA
0. BURESOVA H. PINSKER
KAO LIANG CHOW A. H. RIESEN
L. GERBRANDT MARK R. ROSENZWEIG
HOLGER HYDEN HAROLD SALIVE
ALLAN L. JACOBSON JAY M. SCHLECHTER
V. Ph. KONOVALOV T. P. SEMYONOVA
I. KUPFERMANN TSUYOSHI SHIGEHISA
M. LAUFER Ε. N. SOKOLOV
JAMES V. McCONNELL PHYLLIS SPEAR
SHARON McDONALD D. N. SPINELLI
JAMES L. McGAUGH ENDEL TULVING
ARTHUR W. MELTON M. VERZEANO
BRENDA MILNER O. S. VINOGRADOVA
NANCY C. WAUGH
BIOLOGY OF MEMORY
EDITED BY
K A RL H. P R I B R AM
DEPARMENTS OF PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
D O N A LD E. B R O A D B E NT
M. R. C. APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY UNIT
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND
1970
A C A D E M IC P R E SS
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
New York L o n d on Toronto Sydney San Francisco
Copyright © 1970, by Academic Press, Inc.
all rights reserved
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-84157
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
80 18 28 9 87 6 5 4
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin.
G. G. ARAKELOV, Department of Neuropsychology, Moscow State Uni­
versity, Moscow, USSR (175)
DONALD E. BROADBENT, M.R.C. Applied Psychology Unit, Cam­
bridge, England (15)
J. BURES, Institute of Physiology, Prague, Czechoslovakia (223)
0. BURESOVA, Institute of Physiology, Prague, Czechoslovakia (223)
KAO LIANG CHOW, Division of Neurology, Stanford University School
of Medicine, Stanford, California (273)
L. GERBRANDT,* Institute of Physiology, Prague, Czechoslovakia (223)
HOLGER HYDfiN, Institute of Neurobiology, Faculty of Medicine, Uni­
versity of Goteborg, Goteborg, Sweden (101)
ALLAN L. JACOBSON,f University of California, Los Angeles, Cali­
fornia (123)
V. Ph. KONOVALOV, Department of Memory Problems, Academy
Center for Biological Research, Puschino-on-the-Oka, USSR (191)
1. KUPFERMANN, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and De­
partment of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School, New
York, New York (163)
M. LAUFER,J Department of Biophysics and Nuclear Medicine, Univer­
sity of California, Los Angeles, California (239)
JAMES V. McCONNELL, Mental Health Research Institute, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan (129)
SHARON McDONALD, Department of Biophysics and Nuclear Medi­
cine, University of California, Los Angeles, California (239)
JAMES L. McGAUGH, Department of Psychobiology, University of Cali­
fornia, Irvine, California (51)
* Present address: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Veterans Administration Hos­
pital, West Haven, Connecticut.
t Present address: Department of Psychology, San Francisco State College, San
Francisco, California.
t Present address: Fellow of the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cien-
tificas, Caracas, Venezuela.
vii
viii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
ARTHUR W. MELTON, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
(3)
BRENDA MILNER, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University,
Montreal, Canada (29)
BENNET B. MURDOCK, JR., University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario
(11)
P. B. NEVELSKY, Kharkov University, Kharkov, USSR (21)
A. PAKULA, Department of Neuropsychology, Moscow State University,
Moscow, USSR (175)
H. PINSKER, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and Department
of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School, New York,
New York (163)
A. H. RIESEN, University of California, Riverside, California (87)
MARK R. ROSENZWEIG, University of California, Berkeley, California
(69)
HAROLD SALIVE, Mental Health Research Institute, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan (129)
JAY M. SCHLECHTER, University of California, Los Angeles, California
(123)
T. P. SEMYONOVA, Department of Memory Problems, Academy Center
for Biological Research, Puschino-on-the-Oka, USSR (191)
TSUYOSHI SHIGEHISA, Mental Health Research Institute, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan (129)
Ε. N. SOKOLOV, Department of Neuropsychology, Moscow State Uni­
versity, Moscow, USSR (175)
PHYLLIS SPEAR, Department of Biophysics and Nuclear Medicine,
University of California, Los Angeles, California (239)
D. N. SPINELLI, Stanford University, Stanford, California (293)
ENDEL TULVING, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario (7)
M. VERZEANO,* Department of Biophysics and Nuclear Medicine, Uni­
versity of California, Los Angeles, California (239)
O. S. VINOGRADOVA, Department of Memory Problems, Academy
Center for Biological Research, Puschino-on-the-Oka, USSR (191)
NANCY C. WAUGH, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
(63)
* Present address: Department of Psychobiology, University of California, Irvine,
California.
PREFACE
As recently as in midcentury, biologists and psychologists alike de­
spaired of coming to grips with the problem of how we organize our
experience into the lasting structures that influence subsequent behavior.
The scientific climate has changed radically during the 1960's—a frontal
attack on the problem of memory organization has been mounted. Com­
puter scientists, mathematicians, behavioral psychologists, neuropsycholo­
gists, neurophysiologists, biophysicists, and biochemists have each in their
own way found it possible to work effectively on the nature of memory.
Some start with introspections and externalize these into programs meant
to simulate subjective experience. Others begin with observed behavior
and analyze the time course of the effectiveness of events that determine
that behavior. Still others record the electrical and chemical changes pro­
duced in the brain as evidence that a record is being organized by this
critical anatomical unit.
The enigma of memory has thus finally been engaged and work is
underway. One might therefore best view this volume as pages from a
diary describing a scientific journey of discovery. As such, it makes a
fascinating tale.
The contributions are presented according to topic. An analysis of
the issues is given in the beginning chapters and the final chapters deal
with some attempts at realizing memory models in hardware and wetware.
In between is detailed much of the meager and hard-won biological evi­
dence that is available today—that plastic changes can and do occur within
the organism as a consequence of experience.
The XVIII International Congress of Psychology, held in Moscow in
August 1966, was notable for its outstanding program of symposia organ­
ized by Alexander Romanovitch Luria. Among these, two were devoted to
the topic of the memory trace. Luria and the chairmen of these gatherings
decided that the topic was of sufficient general interest and the presenta­
tions of sufficient merit to warrant publication. This decision was imple­
mented and supplemented in the following way. For one or another reason
some who were invited were unable to attend the Moscow meetings.
Manuscripts were solicited and obtained from these absentees. Further, a
few cogent contributions were presented at the Fiftieth Anniversary Con­
vention of the American Psychological Association held in Washington,
ix
χ PREFACE
D.C. in 1967 and these were solicited. All in all, the volume therefore
represents the thinking and research on memory current in the latter part
of the 1960's.
We hope the reader will come away sharing our enthusiasm for this
vista of a research area.
KARL H. PRIBRAM
DONALD E. BROADBENT
SHORT- AND LONG-TERM POSTPERCEPTUAL MEMORY:
DICHOTOMY OR CONTINUUM?
ARTHUR W. MELTON
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Novel stimulus information, which is known to have been responded to (per­
ceived), suffers a rapid decrease in recallability over the first 30 sec. filled with
rehearsal-preventing activity. With increased duration or frequency of the origi­
nal presentation, short-term memory (STM) for such novel information shows
marked improvement, with perfect recognition and complete recall after very
long periods of time as the limit (LTM). In spite of this apparent continuity of
STM and LTM, some behavior theorists assume that two mechanisms with differ­
ent characteristics are involved in STM and LTM; others assume that the pro­
cesses involved in STM are qualitatively the same as those involved in LTM.
Currently it seems unlikely that any set of experimental observations will
persuade continuum proponents to accept a dichotomy interpretation of STM or
vice versa. The reason for the intransigence of the continuum theorist may,
however, be readily identified. They expect the principles of the interference
theory of long-term forgetting, which are rooted in the assumptions of contem­
porary S-R association theory, to be applicable to short-term forgetting and
remembering. To grant an exception in STM would place severe limitations on
the application of S-R theory to perceptual, discriminative, and categorizing
responses. In particular, the point at issue seems to be the role of the stimulus in
determining excitatory and inhibitory processes, and even more specifically, the
role of stimulus similarity in the production of interference or inhibition in
recall or both.
At the level of observation, the S-R theory of forgetting, as developed in the
context of LTM, specifies that the amounts of retroactive interference (RI) and
proactive interference (PI) are positively correlated with the similarity of the
to-be-remembered unit (TBRU) and the interpolated activity (RI) or prior activi­
ty (PI). At the level of theory, these observed effects (and their vagaries) are
traced to similarity of the stimulus terms in the two (or more) S-R paradigms
3
4 ARTHUR W. MELTON
involved in the perception and retrieval of two (or more) differentiated but
mutually incompatible responses.
Theories that assume a special STM mechanism or process seek, at the obser­
vational level, to deny the importance of the similarity of the TBRU and the
prior or interpolated activity. Instead, the loss of information from STM is
attributed either to the passage of time and the autonomous decay processes
correlated with time (Brown, 1958; Broadbent, 1963), or to the number of
perceptual acts subsequent to the perception of the TBRU (Waugh & Norman,
1965). Both of these theories identify the period of time following the percep­
tion of the TBRU as the locus of the processes that produce decrement in recall;
neither theory has given particular attention to the effect of prior activities (PI)
on STM, and when such effects are considered, it must be assumed that, follow­
ing Conrad (1960), they are interpreted as a consequence of the forgetting of the
TBRU, not as a cause of such forgetting.
The evidence that persuades the S-R association theorist to remain intransi­
gent regarding STM processes is of two kinds. The first shows that short-term
forgetting is very imperfectly correlated, if at all, with either time or the number
of dissimilar perceptual responses when the similarity of prior activity and the
TBRU is minimal, as it is on the very first trial of an experiment. Data from the
first trial of an experiment by Noyd (1965) show that the recall of 2-, 3-, and
5-noun TBRUs after 4 sec. of digit reading have the expected differences attrib­
utable to length of TBRU, but there is no further reduction in recall after an
additional 4 or 20 sec. of digit reading. Although the 4-sec. interval in this
experiment may be too long to provide a proper test of the recency effect
attributed by Waugh and Norman (1965) to "primary" memory, it is notewor­
thy that a strongly bowed serial-position curve for correct responses is present in
recall after 4, 8, and 24 sec, although slightly reduced at the 24-sec. interval as
compared with the 4-sec. interval.
The second persuasive line of evidence relates to the presence and amount of
proactive interference in STM. Keppel and Underwood (1962) and Loess (1964)
have demonstrated that PI builds up rapidly over the first few trials of an
experiment in which the successive TBRUs are drawn from the same category of
elements (consonants). Wickens, Born and Allen (1963) have confirmed this
finding and have shown that release from this accumulated PI occurs when one
shifts to a different category of elements in constructing the TBRU. Loess
(1965) has again confirmed the build-up of PI over successive strings of words
drawn from the same semantic category (e.g., "animal" words) and has again
obtained release from PI by shifting to a different semantic category.
The data to be reported extend this evidence for PI as a major factor in
short-term forgetting and its dependence on similarity. The data of Noyd (1965)
provide evidence that the amount of forgetting of a 2-, 3-, or 5-word unit is
greatest when the preceding unit has the same length. Intrusion errors (words
from the preceding stimulus unit) are likewise maximal in frequency when the
POSTPERCEPTUAL MEMORY 5
preceding unit and the TBRU have the same length. There is a high correlation
of the serial position of occurrence of an intrusion and its serial position in its
source. This correlation is maximal when the TBRU and the preceding stimulus
units have the same length, but it is present even when there are wide discrep­
ancies in length. Finally, other studies that use only 3-word stimuli or only
5-word stimuli confirm the strong correlation of serial positions in the case of
intrusions and show that the PI in recall (and the overt intrusions) varies in the
expected orderly fashion as one manipulates the degree of learning (number of
repetitions or retention interval or both) of the prior stimulus unit and the
degree of learning of the TBRU.
The position is taken that PI is a major factor in STM and that it occurs as a
consequence of activity prior to the presentation of the initial element of the
TBRU only to the extent that such prior activity and the TBRU are similar.
Some portion of this inhibitory effect of the similar prior ac|ivity is attributable
to active reproductive interference, as evidenced by the overt occurrence of
words appropriate to prior stimulus units. The occurrence of PI and of such
overt intrusions is interpretable in S-R association theory as a coding of TBRUs
by the category of the elements of which they are composed, by a length
category, and by a serial-position category, as well as by contextual cues com­
mon to the entire experimental situation. Such coding is reflected in the func­
tional, implicit stimuli involved in retrieval of information that has been stored
in memory, and such functional stimulus similarity is responsible for the inhibi­
tion or interference in STM as well as in LTM.
REFERENCES
Broadbent, D. E. Flow of information within the organism. Journal of Verbal Learning and
Verbal Behavior, 1963, 2, 34-39.
Brown, J. Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory.Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 1958, 10, 12-21.
Conrad, R. Serial order intrusions in immediate memory. British Journal of Psychology,
1960,51,45-48.
Keppel, G., & Underwood, B. J. Proactive inhibition in short-term retention of single items.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1962, 1, 153-161.
Loess, H. Proactive inhibition in short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behavior, 1964, 3, 362-368.
Loess, H. Proactive inhibition and word category in short-term memory. Paper presented at
meetings of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, May 1965.
Noyd, D. E. Proactive and intrastimulus interference in short-term memory for two-, three-,
and five-word stimuli. Paper presented at meetings of the Western Psychological
Association, Honolulu, June 1965.
Wau^i, N. C, & Norman, D. A. Primary memory. Psychological Review, 1965, 72, 89-104.
Wickens, D. D., Born, D. G., & Allen, C. K. Proactive inhibition and item similarity in
short-term memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1963, 2,
440-445.