Improving Memory and Study Skills:
Advances in Theory and Practice

Douglas Herrmann
Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN

Douglas Raybeck
Hamilton College, Clinton, NY

Michael Gruneberg
University of Wales, Swansea, Wales

Improving Memory
and Study Skills:
Advances in Theory
and Practice

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

is available via the Library of Congress Marc Database under the
LC Control Number 2001099463.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Herrmann, Douglas J.

Improving memory and study skills: advances in theory and practice

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61334-235-0

1. Study skills. 2. Memory. 3. Mnemonics. I. Raybeck, Douglas. II. Gruneberg, Michael M. III. Title

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ISBN 978-1-61334-235-0

Table of Contents

Preface for Students

Preface for Teachers

Acknowledgment

Section I.    Fundamentals

1. Scientific Theory of Studying and Academic Success

2. The Memory System

3. Self Assessment of Memory and Study Skills

Section II. How You Feel When You Study and When You Are Tested

4. Physical State

5. Emotional State

Section III.  Storing Information and Remembering It

6. Memory Manipulations and Study Skills

7. Technical Memory Manipulations

8. Task Specific Manipulations

9. Course and Task Specific Skills

Section IV.  Help from the World Around Us

10. The Physical Environment and External Aids

11. Social Context

Section V. Integration of the Fundamentals with How you Feel, Store and Remember, and Get Help from the Environment

12. Study Savvy

Epilogue

Glossary

References

Author Index

Subject Index

Preface for Students

This book presents the latest and most advanced approach to the improvement of memory and study skills. It is based in part on a revision and extension of a prior book, Improving Student Memory, written by D. Herrmann, D. Raybeck, and Dan Gutman and published by Hogrefe and Huber in 1993.

Improving Memory and Study Skills: Advances in Theory and Practice presents a new “multimodal” framework to improving cognitive functioning. Some aspects of this framework were introduced in Improving Student Memory. However, a number of investigations were conducted in the 1990’s that both supported the multimodal approach and, at the same time, increased understanding of the many factors that affect memory and academic performance.

The multimodal framework rests on three assumptions. First, the improvement of memory and study skills requires consideration of a person’s powers for learning, remembering, and reasoning. In addition, memory and skill improvement is influenced by all modes of psychological functioning, such as a person’s physiological state, emotive state, and states elicited by the physical environment and social context. Second, memory and skill improvement requires practice with the use of procedures that particularly address the content covered in an educational course. Third, students benef it the most from learning new procedures if they understand the reasons why these procedures are effective.

This book presents both the methods and the rationale that has led to the new approach. Students who make a serious effort to learn the theory and techniques covered in this book will be prepared to improve their memory and study skills for those courses that previously challenged them most.

Preface for Teachers

Improving Memory and Study Skills was written to serve as a primary text for a course on study skills. It may also be useful for courses designed to orient students to college life and its expectations.

This book offers many recommendations to improve academic performance (Rego & Sousa, 1999). It also explains the scientif ic reasons for the procedures it recommends. It describes the manner in which memory performance depends on a person’s total psychological functioning, including how a person manages their lifestyle. We have endeavored to ground each explanation in concrete examples, and we have supplied evidence why particular procedures are effective. The authors hope that this book will assist teachers in applying its recommendations to the classroom.

Many students today are stretched in trying to meet all their goals. If the students are not extremely active in campus affairs, they are busy holding a second job or assisting in family responsibilities. Improvements in memory and study skills help them get more out of the limited time they can invest in studying. For those students who hold ambitions that require high grades, memory and skill improvements make the attainment of those goals much more likely.

Students today need education in improving their memory and study skills more than ever before. The students in this generation are predicted to encounter jobs that are more technical than any previous generation. Because technology is continually spiraling upward, today’s student is expected to experience several job shifts throughout his or her career. Thus, students not only need better memory and study skills to cope with the current demands of college life, they also need to acquire as many memory and study skills as possible so that they will be able to learn the information pertinent to the many jobs they will hold throughout their careers. In addition to preparing for a challenging professional life, they will need mental skills for their personal lives more than any previous generation. In the past three decades there has been considerable growth of laws and court decisions that affect everyday life. Like it or not, as a person’s life progresses they will need to learn about many of these changes in the law. For example, laws have been changing as they pertain to: marriage - divorce - annulment - having children - adopting children - buying and owning property - paying taxes - inheriting money - buying insurance - making a will - being sued - and suing someone. To keep abreast of these aspects of modern life, and to avoid being misled, students will want to have excellent learning and remembering skills.

Fortunately, numerous researchers in several different f ields have investigated aspects of memory, learning, studying, and remembering that simply were not subjected to scientif ic scrutiny in the past. As a result, we now have a much better sense of the advantages of certain study practices, and we have greater appreciation of the interrelationships between physical/emotional health and mental powers. Learning and remembering is now seen as being affected by a person’s entire psychology. Consequently, because the brain is a biological entity, it is important to understand that the execution of cognitive processing depends on both physiological and psychological factors.

We are much better able today to supply students with recommendations that may actually improve their academic performance. If students come to appreciate the interrelationship between academic performance and physical/emotional well being, they will adopt habits that promote academic success.

Finally, you may be interested in having your students obtain and study the CD-Rom, The Nature of Memory, which can be ordered with Improving Memory and Study Skills. This CD-Rom, made by the Practical Memory Institute, presents compelling graphics and information that are pertinent to the content of this book. It familiarizes students with the multimodal theory of memory, the philosophy of memory, how to monitor one’s memory performance, the history of scholarship on memory, and external aids to memory. If your students study this CD-Rom, it will make your job and their jobs easier.

TO
DONNA, KAREN, and RHONA

Acknowledgment

We are grateful to everyone who has encouraged us in writing this book. We thank our families for their support during the project. In addition, we thank the numerous students who studied Improving Student Memory and for their comments about that book. Finally, thanks are due to Steve Andrzejewski, Robert Beck, Rob Dimbleby, Jared Jobe, Cathy McEvoy, Paul Mullin, Rick Parente, David Payne, Dana Plude, Alan Searleman, Judy Swez and Carol Yoder for a variety of kinds of help.

Section I.
Fundamentals

1. Scientific Theory of Studying and Academic Success

Attending college provides the opportunity to prepare for the rest of one’s life, both professionally and personally. This book describes the most important thing, other than a major, that can be gained from a college education – an increased mental ability to study, learn, and remember.

Why You Are Reading this Book?

You will develop an increased mental ability to learn and remember by learning what is presented in this book. This chapter will orient you to the mental skills you will be learning about in the following chapters.

Enhancing your college experience. An increased mental ability to learn and remember will obviously increase your performance academically. It will also prepare you to learn and remember in your career. Improving your ability to learn will improve your study skills, and by improving your ability to remember, you will develop your test-taking skills. Furthermore, improving your study skills not only means you will learn more when you study, but also that you will study more efficiently. Efficient studying will give you extra time which you can either devote to bettering your grades or to having more fun while maintaining your grade average (Hattie, Biggs, & Purdie, 1996).

The most important thing you can get from college – an increased ability to learn and remember. The most important reason for improving your memory and study skills is not to get good grades. Nor is it to increase your status on campus, to make the financial aid office support you, or to make your parents or sweetheart be nice to you. The primary reason for trying to improve your memory and study skills is to give you the mental skills that you will need for your career and personal life.

The challenge to your generation. More than any previous generation, you and your classmates will need to have a variety of mental skills for your future careers. Today’s jobs have become more complex in the past two decades than in the prior century. You and others of your generation will need to learn new job responsibilities and technologies throughout your career.

It has been estimated that job knowledge will be completely revised every three to seven years of a person’s career. Most members of this generation will need to continually update professional knowledge and skills. Across your entire career (which will be somewhere between 30 to 45 years), most people will switch jobs at least three times, such as from sales to management to advertising. Some of your classmates will have to switch jobs a dozen times.

Each time a person takes a new job, a great deal of learning is required, as they must learn the responsibilities of that job. In some cases the job may require you to carry out tasks that you have never done before. In addition, you have to learn the names and capabilities of your bosses and co-workers. You will also need to learn more mundane things, such as the spatial layout of an office, where to get supplies, and what forms of assistance are available.

It is important to recognize that your careers are expected to involve more challenging mental tasks than those of your parents or grandparents. The parents of your generation will have switched jobs less often than you will have. The grandparents of your generation may have stayed in a particular job throughout their lives.

More than any previous generation, you will also need mental skills to learn about common tasks encountered in your personal life. You will have to learn and remember more than was required of previous generations because of the growth of laws and court decisions that affect everyday life.

Consider some of the knowledge you will need for your personal life, knowledge that was much simpler for your parents and grandparents. For example, if you plan to marry, you may want to know a little bit about the recent laws affecting marriage, such as the laws governing prenuptial agreements. If you marry, you may well have children. Having and raising children is much more technical than before. If you have children, you will need to learn what is involved in raising children and what rights your children have to be given educational support. If you decide to adopt children, it is necessary to understand adoption law. Perhaps, unfortunately, you may also want to know about the procedures for annulment and about divorce law. With the current divorce rate being at more than 50%, understanding divorce processes will be important for many members of your generation.

Whether you remain single or not, there are still other cognitive tasks that you cannot avoid having to learn about. Eventually you will probably be interested in buying and owning a house. Mortgage options are more detailed than previously, and these change continuously. Of course, you could decide to rent; however, rental agreements are also more complex than in the past. You will have to pay income taxes, and as your income increases, paying taxes becomes more annoying and demanding. You will likely want to buy life insurance. Reading life insurance policies is tremendously challenging. If you are half as successful as your teachers want you to be, you will want to have a will to direct the disposition of your possessions after you leave this world. And, if you are lucky, you may inherit money and/or property, which can be especially complicated if you have a relative who contests your share of an estate. A further possible problem in life is if you decide to sue someone; you will want to learn a lot about how the law regulates this process. Alternatively, someone may decide to sue you and again you will need to understand how this process is regulated. Personal tasks can sometimes require as much learning and remembering as the demands of a job.

The increased difficulty of higher education. Getting an education requires a lot of hard work. Every generation has to learn more than the previous generation. Each coming generation is provided with more years of education than in the past. Thus, today’s generation needs to be more capable of learning and remembering than previous generations.

Fortunately, science has increased our understanding of how we learn and remember, as well as how to reason, solve problems, and make decisions. The old approach to improving studying and academic performance (test taking, writing term papers, oral reports) focused just on the ideas. Without a doubt, ideas are at the core of education. However, it is no longer sufficient for students to acquire only skills that deal with ideas. Science has shown that the best approach to studying and academic performance is multifaceted (Druckman & Swets, 1988; Herrmann & Searleman, 1990, 1992; Herrmann, Plude, Yoder, & Mullin, 1999; McEvoy, 1992; Poon, 1980).

Acquiring memory and study skills. To study more effectively and perform well academically, you also need to learn how to keep your mind sharp by getting into the best physical and mental condition. You need to adopt a more positive and realistic attitude about your academic courses. Through making better use of the environment, such as taking good notes, learning is facilitated. Acquiring better habits when taking tests will improve your academic performance, such as planning the use of time when taking an exam.

And, of course, the more you learn about ways that make your mind function optimally, the better your academic performance will be. As you learn and practice your memory and study skills in different courses, you can develop your overall understanding of how to learn and remember.

Acquiring athletic skills. The approach recommended in science is very much like the approaches that are successful for developing other kinds of skills. For example, suppose you wanted to improve your performance at a sport, like tennis, golf, or football. If you were truly serious about improving, you would work on as many different methods as possible that would lead to a better performance.

You would seek out the appropriate information for getting into the best physical and mental condition to win. You would work on adopting a more positive and realistic attitude about your abilities. By taking care to learn the customs of play and the tactics that suit specific arenas or opponents, you would be prepared to execute play appropriate to the situations that arise. You would acquire a greater appreciation of how environmental factors, such as the condition of the court or playing field, affect the game. Naturally, the more you practice, the better your performance will be. Good players of all sports have an encyclopedic knowledge of the things to do that lead to a fit condition for the game, a proper attitude toward playing and players, a detailed knowledge of how to use the environment, an ability to deal with specific situations, and effective ways of practicing. The same is true for people who master learning and study skills.

The importance of memory to study skills. This book teaches both memory and study skills to facilitate academic performance. Why does this book emphasize memory so much in its treatment of study skills?

Memory is crucial to the effective use of study skills. Firstly, study skills involve learning which, of course, entails creating memories for knowledge. Additionally, test taking is largely an exercise in remembering. To a degree, tests – as well as term papers – may also call for reasoning, problem solving, and decision making. However, people cannot reason, solve problems, and make decisions on exams and term papers if they have not first learned the basic knowledge pertinent to these. Thus, the most important kind of skills that you can acquire for studying and academic performance are those that enhance your memory (Herrmann, 1990a; Herrmann & Searleman, 1990, 1992; Hertzog, 1992).

General and task specific skills. Some skills are fairly general in that they affect a wide variety of academic tasks in the same way. For example, a general skill that all students use is rehearsal. Rehearsal is a general skill because it can be used when studying for most courses. Other skills are very specific; in fact most study skills are specific. The skills needed for learning vocabulary have little to do with the skills required for studying diagrams or equations. Learning a poem requires different skills to those for learning about a document or a story. Because study skills are usually specific, various psychologists have sought to develop new methods of memory improvement that are most effective when applied to certain tasks. Later in the book we will offer suggestions for the development of skills for a variety of specific tasks, such as studying poems, documents, stories, and other kinds of material.

The Job Description of a Student

To ensure that this book covers everything that it should, the content of the book has been designed to meet the demands of the job of a student. Every job has a description. In the military, industry, and medicine, each person who performs a certain job is expected to know his or her job description. This is the same for students, and it is helpful for students to appreciate the requirements for the job of a student.

Students everywhere have the same job description. If they are to be successful in college, they need to perform the tasks called for by this. Here is a summary of the tasks that make up a student’s job description:

Identify what a course requires

Read books and articles in-depth

Extract meaning from what is read and heard in class

Prepare for exams

Take exams

Write term papers

Stay in shape: physically and emotionally

Be socially appropriate

Take note of the environment

Continually educate themselves about new ideas concerning the above tasks

The Job Description in More Detail

Identify what a course requires. A student can expect to be successful only to the extent that they understand the professor’s objectives. The biggest clue to what a professor requires from students is the course syllabus. It provides a road map of where the professor wishes to take the students. A good sense of the direction the course is taking will enable you to better determine which parts of the course are important. It is important not to become so immersed in detail that the general direction of the course is missed. The sooner an overall picture of the course is gained, the sooner students do well on exams and term papers.

In-depth reading procedures. Simply turning the pages and reading the words on the pages is seldom sufficient for truly understanding the course material. Reading is best viewed as an active process. Rather than simply passively receiving wisdom, the essential points of the text have to be looked for. In the next section, we will supply you with some specific techniques to promote your understanding, retention, and ability to deal critically with the material you read.

Techniques for extracting meaning. A student has to do a large number of assignments from widely differing courses. It is impossible to memorize everything that a course presents, and indeed this is not necessary. Instead, the most important information should be extracted, which relates both to each specific assignment and to the more general objectives of the course. There are a variety of techniques discussed below that can be employed to extract the meaning from books, lectures, and other material, such as videos or sites on the Web. These techniques require actively sifting through the relevant information to find what must be known and understood.

The most valuable ability for meaning extraction is note taking. Most instructors will try to make just a few major points in a single class. Everything else serves to illustrate the key concepts (Van Locke, 1999). Therefore, developing the ability to recognize the major points of a lecture is important, and also the need for suff icient detail, so that the lecture notes can be later reconstructed.

Exam preparation. Most students dread examinations. Having taken an exam, many students are surprised to discover that they did not do as well as they had expected. After learning about the skills for exam taking described below, students will have less trouble preparing for exams.

Examinations are usually designed to test the understanding as well as the recall of course material. Many instructors assume that students remember the material to which they were exposed, and they want to see what the students can do with it. Can they construct answers to questions that they may not have encountered before? Preparing for an examination benefits from both an active approach and a continuing attempt to maintain an overview of the instructor’s objectives.

Exam strategies. Many students, who spend a considerable amount of time and energy preparing for an examination, dive into an exam and forge ahead without a plan. You will discover that you will do better on exams if you decide at the beginning how much time you will spend on each part of the exam.

Exams come in different forms, such as multiple choice exams and essay exams. The approach for dealing with multiple choice questions is quite different from that needed for essay questions. Later sections of this book offer specific advice for answering different types of exams. We encourage you to stay in control of your answers rather than letting the questions push you around.

Taking care of yourself. A student must be in good physical shape in order to do well when performing academic tasks. Variables that affect a person’s physical state include exercise, sleep, food, time of day, etc. It is important to keep track of your chemical consumption, such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, which can interfere with learning and remembering (Kolakowsky, 1997; Snel & Lorist, 1998).

Similarly, you should be aware of the over-the-counter and prescription medicines that you take. Many medications dull your senses and make it hard to concentrate. If you get sick, you are likely to become slower mentally and make more mistakes.

Your emotional, attitudinal, and motivational states affect your willingness to study and take tests. It is important to maintain good self esteem and be in a positive emotional state when you are in class and when you study (Ginter & Dwinell, 1994). Keep your eye on the positive consequences of good grades when you prepare for and take exams.

Be socially appropriate. Social interactions are important to success in college. Remember that people differ in how they study. Others can give you good advice about how to do your best in various courses. However, remember that a person will get the best advice from other students regarding how to study from other students like themselves.

Your relationships with other students can affect how well you do and how much help you get from others. Stay away from students who attempt to be buddy-buddy with the professor or teaching assistant. People who are friends with the “apple polisher” will also be seen the same way. If other students were to perceive you thís way, it will be the end of help from them.

When you answer questions in class or take oral exams, present yourself in a credible way. Even when a person has successfully recalled something in a social context, he or she may still have a problem convincing others that what has been recalled is correct. There are five ways you can increase the likelihood that others will believe in what you recall. Express your recall with an appropriate degree of confidence. Strive to make the contents of your recall include the most essential details. Claim an honest level of confidence in the accuracy of what you say you know. Express your certitude or doubt prudently. Avoid overstatement or understatement in your confidence in what your have recalled. Alternatively, do not be shy; sit up and speak confidently if you are sure of what you know.

Screen your recall to be sure that you don’t “blurt out” something that you actually know to be wrong. Give extra scrutiny to answers that come quickly and seem very familiar. If you cannot recall something while studying, try the Yoga method of recall. Lay down in a quiet spot where you won’t be disturbed. Relax the muscles in your body. When you are really relaxed, put questions to yourself about the information you would like to recall.

Make use of the physical environment. Use the physical environment to focus on what you need to learn. Color code your notes using different colors to show what is the most important, the next most important, and so on.

Use tape recorders to record a summary of points needed for a test. Then you can listen to the tape when you have to do other chores, such as house cleaning or while driving to school or work. Time your study sessions carefully and set alarms for when you need to move on to another topic.

Continuing education. You ability to study, learn, and remember will increase across your college years, indeed across your life. The sooner you acquire effective study skills, the better off you will be. Even when your skills are good, continue to increase your understanding of how to improve your mental functioning.

Each year there are new books, magazine articles, and cassettes on how to improve study skills, and occasional TV shows on specific scientific developments in research on memory and study skills. Participating in courses or training programs on study skill improvement can challenge and inform you even more fully. Every college and university offers courses on how to improve study techniques. It is easy to forget some of these skills, so refresher courses are periodically a good thing. Continued study of memory will deepen your theoretical understanding, enabling you to make better use of your mind in college and subsequently in your career.

This Book’s Plan for Improving Your Academic Performance

The approach to the improvement of memory and study skills presented in this book is very new (Neisser, 1978). It has been practiced mainly in a small number of universities and colleges, where it has been developed. This book provides you with the latest detailed account of the new scientific method in a form available to the general public (Herrmann, Raybeck, & Gutman, 1993). You will be presented with information and practical guidance for memory improvement based on the latest scientific knowledge in the field. Because of investigations by research psychologists and educational psychologists, many more ways to improve memory ability and study skills are available today than existed just a few years ago.

The approach of this book is comprehensive. You will learn about the memory skills appropriate for certain academic tasks, while also learning techniques for facilitating your attitude, physical condition, emotive state, conversational skills, and for using physical memory aids, all of which have been found to reduce memory failures (Herrmann & Searleman, 1990, 1992; Herrmann et al., 1999; Herrmann, Weingartner, Searleman, & McEvoy, 1992; Poon, 1980; Yesavage, Sheikh, & Lapp, 1989). More than any previous book, this book prepares you not only for the kinds of tasks encountered in college, but also for the learning and remembering tasks you will encounter in your careers.

This book will assist you in improving your ability to study by thoroughly acquainting you with the different ways to manipulate your memory. The book is made up of twelve chapters divided into five sections. The first section consists of three chapters that review the fundamental ideas for understanding how one improves one’s memory and study skills. Chapter 1, this chapter, provides an overview of the book. Chapter 2 presents the latest theory on how people can make the best use of their memory and study skills. Chapter 3 gives you an opportunity to assess the current state of your memory and study skills within the framework of this theory, and explores other important ways of looking at memory and study skills.

The second section addresses the importance of how you feel when you attempt to study or take a test. Chapters 4 and 5 examine ways to deal with your emotional state and physical state when learning and remembering are called for.

The third section addresses how information is stored in memory during learning and retrieved from memory during remembering. Chapter 6 provides a thorough grounding in the fundamentals of manipulations of memory and study skills. The following chapter, Chapter 7, explains further how technical manipulations, known generally as mnemonics, can enhance mental processing ever further. Chapter 8 reviews the manipulations of memory for many different everyday memory tasks that confront students and most other people. The recommendations in this chapter illustrate the claim that most memory tasks require a specific approach. Chapter 9 extends this theme to learning and test taking tasks encountered in college, offering specific advice on how to deal with particular tasks.

The fourth section addresses a topic not commonly recognized in textbooks on study skills; how the world around a person affects their performance. Chapter 10 shows how the physical environment, including devices sold at high tech and trendy stores, can speed up learning and assist you on term papers and open book exams. Similarly, Chapter 11 demonstrates how social situations can give you clues (without cheating) to perform better than you might expect.

Finally, the fifth section integrates the knowledge examined in the previous sections (concerning the fundamentals, how you feel, and storing and remembering information). Chapter 12 teaches you how to tackle studying in a forceful manner by creating or using repertoires of skills drawn from the previous chapters that are especially useful for certain academic tasks. Chapter 12 takes another look at theory in order to give you a clear overview of the study process. Finally, there is a brief epilogue, which is best appreciated by simply reading it after you have finished the other chapters.

Summary

More than any previous generation, your generation will need to have many mental skills for your professional lives. The approach recommended by science to improve memory and study skills is very much like the approaches that work best for developing other kinds of skills.

To study more effectively and perform better academically, you need to acquire better methods to learn and remember. You also need to learn how to keep your mind sharp by getting

into the best physical and mental condition to learn and remember. By adopting a more positive and realistic attitude about your academic courses, you can overcome psychological obstacles to studying and remembering. Take care to learn the tactics that suit specific courses or professors. Your academic performance can also be enhanced if you mentally rehearse your plan for how to take an exam; knowing the “mental game” of strategies of test taking can give you an advantage on the actual exam.

Thus, this book is designed to give you information and practical guidance for memory improvement based on the latest scientific knowledge in the field. As mentioned above, research has made great strides in understanding how to improve memory ability. Although further investigation is needed to refine and balance the methods of the new approach presented here, most scientists agree with the variety of memory improvement skills that we recommend.

2. The Memory System

Where is Your Memory?

Before you can choose the best way to improve your memory and study skills, you have to know how your memory works. The memory system is located in the brain and the brain stem (at the top of the spinal cord). As with other parts of the brain, the memory system receives information from the senses and sends signals that enable us to respond with speech or gestures (Squire, 1987; Squire & Butters, 1984).

Different portions of the brain seem to perform different memory functions (see Figure 1). A part of the brain stem is involved in registering information into long-term memory. The temporal lobes (the parts of the brain that lie alongside your ears) are also involved in registering memories. Additionally, different types of memories are located in different parts of the brain. People who have suffered brain damage in a certain area (as might result from an auto accident) may have great difficulty learning abstract concepts and yet be able to acquire motor skills.

Figure 1. Location of the Memory Processing Centers in the Brain

Because the memory system is made of brain tissue, your memory performance is affected by the state of the brain. Poor health, fatigue, malnourishment, and substance abuse can all lead to poor memory performance. Thus, one of the most obvious – but often neglected – ways to increase the efficiency of the memory system is to improve your physical condition.

Memory Processing

Although many memory functions have been located in the brain, many more functions have yet to be located. Nevertheless, even when it is unclear where certain processes occur in the brain, there is still a good understanding of how memory processes may malfunction. When memory fails us, it does so in one of three ways. It can fail to register something initially in memory; it can fail to retain over time that which was successfully registered; or it can fail to remember something, despite successful registration and retention (Talland, 1968). The theory many psychologists advance assumes that memory performance is due to a system of several components, each with its own specific job to do (e.g., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Baddeley, 1986, 1990; Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Fodor, 1983; Herrmann et al., 2001; Loftus, 1980; Wilson, 1987). Much like a stereo or hi-fi system, each component of the memory system contributes to the overall functioning of the system.

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