Memory: BBS Call for Commentators

[Stevan Harnad]

    Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article on:

         MEMORY METAPHORS by A. Koriat and M. Goldsmith

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current
BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to
suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to
become a BBS Associate, please send email to:

bbs at ecs.soton.ac.uk or write to:

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences
    Department of Psychology
    University of Southampton
    Highfield, Southampton
    SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
    http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html
    gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
    ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS
    
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by
anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________

        MEMORY METAPHORS AND THE LABORATORY/REAL-LIFE CONTROVERSY:
        CORRESPONDENCE VERSUS STOREHOUSE VIEWS OF MEMORY

                Asher Koriat and Morris Goldsmith
                Department of Psychology
                University of Haifa
                Haifa, Israel
                rsps301 at uvm.haifa.ac.il

    KEYWORDS: accuracy, assessment, capacity ecological validity,
    intentionality, memory, metamemory, metaphors, monitoring,
    representation, storehouse, subject control.

    ABSTRACT: The study of memory is witnessing a spirited clash
    between proponents of traditional laboratory research and those
    advocating a more naturalistic approach to the study of
    "everyday" memory. The debate has generally centered on the
    "what" (content), "where" (context), and "how" (methods) of memory
    research. In the present target article, we argue that this
    controversy discloses a further, more fundamental breach between
    two underlying memory metaphors, each having distinct implications
    for memory theory and assessment: Whereas traditional memory
    research has been dominated by the storehouse metaphor, leading to
    a focus on the quantity of items remaining in store, the recent
    wave of everyday memory research discloses a shift towards a
    correspondence metaphor, focusing on the accuracy or faithfulness
    of memory in representing past events. Our analysis shows the
    correspondence metaphor to call for a research approach which
    differs from the traditional approach in important respects: in
    emphasizing the intentional-representational function of memory, in
    addressing the wholistic and graded aspects of memory
    correspondence, in taking an output-bound assessment perspective,
    and in allowing more room for the operation of subject-controlled
    metamemory processes and motivational factors. This analysis can
    help tie together some of the what, where, and how aspects of the
    everyday-laboratory controversy. More importantly, in explicating
    the unique metatheoretical foundation of the accuracy-oriented
    approach to memory, our aim is to promote a more effective
    exploitation of the correspondence metaphor in both naturalistic
    and laboratory research contexts.

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To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from
ftp.princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is
bbs.koriat). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft.
Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise
you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article.
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These files are also on the World Wide Web and the easiest way to
retrieve them is with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc.
Here are some of the URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html
    http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html
    gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
    ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.koriat
    ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.koriat

To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
   or
ftp 128.112.128.1
   When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
   Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
   yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
   To show the available files, type:
ls
   Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.koriat
   When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit

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Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers:
ftpmail at decwrl.dec.com
       and
bitftp at pucc.bitnet
that will do the transfer for you. To one or the
other of them, send the following one line message:

help

for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in
the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or
bitftp will then execute for you).

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