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Let's start from scratch in thinking about what memory is for, and consequently, how it works. Suppose that memory and conceptualization work in the service of perception and action. In this case, conceptualization is the encoding of patterns of possible physical interaction with a three-dimensional world. These patterns are constrained by the structure of the environment, the structure of our bodies, and memory. Thus, how we perceive and conceive of the environment is determined by the types of bodies we have. Such a memory would not have associations. Instead, how concepts become related (and what it means to be related) is determined by how separate patterns of actions can be combined given the constraints of our bodies. I call this combination “mesh.” To avoid hallucination, conceptualization would normally be driven by the environment, and patterns of action from memory would play a supporting, but automatic, role. A significant human skill is learning to suppress the overriding contribution of the environment to conceptualization, thereby allowing memory to guide conceptualization. The effort used in suppressing input from the environment pays off by allowing prediction, recollective memory, and language comprehension. I review theoretical work in cognitive science and empirical work in memory and language comprehension that suggest that it may be possible to investigate connections between topics as disparate as infantile amnesia and mental-model theory.

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Spacing repetitions generally facilitates memory for the repeated events. This article describes a theory of spacing effects that uses the same principles to account for both facilitatory and inhibitory effects of spacing in a number of memory paradigms. Increasing the spacing between repetitions is assumed to result in the storage of greater amounts of information of three types or levels: contextual, structural (associative), and descriptive. Contextual information is encoded automatically, while the encoding of the structural and descriptive information depends on control processes utilized. Remembering involves accessing the stored information using retrieval cues containing information on any level that matches the stored information. The ultimate effectiveness of the spacing is controlled by this matehing between the retrieval cues and the stored information. Previous experiments demonstrating the operation of these principles on the structural and descriptive levels are reviewed. Three new experiments are reported that illustrate interactions between stored information and retrieval cues based on contextual information.The effect of arepetition has always been of great importance to all theories of learning and memory. That performance improves with repetitions is one of the basic phenomena to be explained. Nonetheless, there is not an adequate explanation of when, how, or why repetitions are effective. No single-process theory, nor many multiprocess theories, can account for all, or even most, of the empirical findings. The goal of this article is to present a theoretical framework that integrates a number of different repetition-effect phenomena and that makes a variety of new predictions.Specifica11y, the theory is designed to account for distributed practice and spacing effects found with verbal stimuli in a majority of verbal learning and memory paradigms. The distributed practice effect refers to enhanced memory performance on repeated iterns whose presentations are distributed (either through time or through time and other presentations), as opposed to performance on items whose presentations are massed or contiguous. In addition, in many situations the amount of distribution is positively correlated with performance. As the spacing, or lag, between the presentations increases, performance genera11y shows a concomitant, negatively accelerated improvement (Melton, 1970). Distributed practice effects, in one sense, have been difficult to explain because of their ubiquity across both tasks and information processing strategies (Underwood,

A temporal distinctiveness theory of contextually cued retrieval from memory is presented and applied to recency and modality effects. According to this theory, one part of the mnemonic trace of an item is a representation of the item's time of presentation. Time of presentation may be encoded with a coarse grain (so that it is consistent with a wide range of times) or with a fine grain (so that it is consistent with a narrow range of times). Retrieval proceeds by constructing temporally defined search sets that include representations of items consistent with the temporal bounds of the search set. The temporal width of the search set increases as the retention interval increases. Recency effects arise from retrieval of recently presented items from narrow search sets that include representations of few items; within the context of the search set, these items are distinctive and recalled well. Superiority in recall of recently presented auditory information in comparison with recently presented visual information is attributed to differences in the grain of time of presentation representations for aurally (fine grain) and visually (coarse grain) presented information. Four experiments confirm qualitative and quantitative predictions of the theory, including the prediction of auditory superiority at the beginning of the list when the initial items are temporally distinct.