Imagery, affective arousal and memory consolidation

Abstract

A DISPARITY exists between the methods and theory that have been developed to study human memory and those used in animal learning studies. Present research strategies in human memory focus on (1) differences in the stimuli-to-be stored in memory (such as the extent to which words can be encoded)¹; (2) conditions that precede new learning which influence the acquisition, stimulus transformation and encoding of input; (3) the context in which information is presented at the time of storage or retrieval from memory (where context determines the specific encoding strategy used to store and retrieve information)²; and (4) conditions that affect storage decay (such as those which might prevent rehearsal or precipitate “unlearning” of information stored in memory). The main theme of this research stresse stimulus characteristics, often causally defined, as determinants of input–output relationships in memory. Few attempts have been made to develop the structural detail of human memory with respect to underlying biological mechanisms.