1 comments about Everyday Memory.

1. Everyday Memory edited by Svein Magnussen, Tore Helst (Psychology Press) During the academic year 2003-2004, an international group of cognitive psychologists was invited to the Centre of Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo. The editors of the present volume, whose proposal "Towards a comprehensive model of human memory" had been selected by CAS, organized the group. The groups may choose to proceed in terms of parallel individual projects, collaborate on a joint project, or a mixture of both. The memory group decided on the latter solution, and the present volume is the result of the joint effort.
   It soon turned out, as it often does in the course of a project in progress, that the focus of the project changed from a "comprehensive model" to "everyday memory". Representing a broad range of research portfolios, a joint interest of the members of the group was the application of basic research to memory in everyday contexts, and precisely because of the range of interests, we decided that a volume written by the group might cover topics that are not usually covered by books on human memory. The present vol¬ume was broadly conceived by the editors and planned in detail by the entire group in the initial workshops, during which the various chapters were assigned to author teams. In the final versions, a couple of the author teams recruited collaborators who originally were not associated with CAS (Chapters 2 and 7). Choices of themes, as well as chapter drafts, were dis¬cussed in joint sessions. Thus, the present volume should be considered a shared responsibility of the group.
   The book is written for the general reader of cognitive psych¬ology and memory, a reader interested in how memory works in everyday situations, familiar with the basics of current psychology of cognition but not necessarily familiar with the technical details of the research. Yet, the book does not abstain from going into details when required or introducing new ideas and viewpoints. As a textbook it might be useful for courses targeting everyday memory and those discussing limits and applications of current memory research.
   Excerpt: During the four decades that have passed since the "cognitive revolution" in psychology, research on human memory has grown extensively, and memory is by now one of the most intensively investigated areas in psychology, and perhaps in neuroscience in general. Cognitive psychology, joining forces with theoretically motivated patient studies of cognitive neuropsychology, and with the brain imaging of cognitive processes by PET and fMRI technology, has produced a wealth of knowledge about the organization of human mem¬ory and the brain mechanisms involved in the encoding, storage and retrieval processes. This research is covered by most textbooks on memory and cogni¬tive neuroscience, and will only be touched on in passing in the present volume. The focus of the present volume is on the more general aspects of memory that emanate from examinations of memory in everyday contexts. Thirty years ago, Neisser (1976, 1978) recommended that researchers focus on the relation between the theoretical and the practical questions in the cognitive explorations of memory. In the wake of Neisser's critique, there followed many efforts to examine issues of everyday memory scientifically. Examples of this line of research are studies of autobiographical memory, studies of the memory for past and prospective actions and events, and studies of the memory of witnesses to dramatic and mundane complex events. And grad¬ually, the study of memory in everyday contexts changed from studying the quantity of memory performance -- how much is remembered -- to studying the quality of the memory performance and the distortions and errors contained in the memory reports. These themes will pop up in several places in this volume.
   In planning the book, it soon became clear that the editors should not aim to cover all aspects of everyday memory, but rather to cover some aspects of everyday memory that are not covered by other texts, reflecting the research interests and expertise of this particular team of authors. We have selected memory domains where the members of the project group at the Centre of Advanced Study (CAS), at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters 2003-2004, have the research background required to match the questions of everyday memory with the corresponding laboratory research. The answers to a large-scale survey study, cited in Chapter 1, suggest a folk psychology of everyday memory. The chapters reviewing and discussing relevant everyday memory research demonstrate some overlap but also some disagreements between scientists and lay people. Where there is agreement, science may serve to explain why common sense is right; where there are disagreements, research may correct folk psychology.
   The ideas we have and the ways we think about memory will guide us, not only in scientific research, but also in the choices and decisions we make in everyday life about the possibilities and limitations of development and change, in ourselves and in others. We know something about how memory researchers think about memory, but we know little about the ideas and opinions that people have in general. There are two ways of finding this out: We can ask people what they believe about memory or we can examine how people talk about memory. Chapter 1 does both, analysing first the memory metaphors of daily language and of science, and second, discussing the results of a large-scale public opinion poll carried out during the planning stage of this book. In this study, a representative sample of 1000 adult Norwegians were asked some of the questions about memory that memory researchers are frequently asked privately in social settings, and by the media. The three chapters closing the volume follow up the themes introduced by the opening chapter. Chapter 11 discusses meta-cognitive aspects of memory, the plan-ning and monitoring of learning, and memory challenges, controlled by our own conceptions of cognitive capacities and limitations. Chapter 12 reports the results of a study of the relationship between beliefs about the capacity of own memory performance and the actual memory performance on relevant memory tasks, measured in the ageing population, and Chapter 13 concludes the volume by introducing a new memory metaphor, the concept of memory pathways. The metaphor is based on the observation that episodic memories sometimes simply pop out, at times against one's will and wishes, while at other times they can be surprisingly hard, or even impossible, to get at, even when one knows that these memories are not lost.
   Four chapters on types of memory and five chapters on individual and social factors in memory follow the opening chapter. Starting with some typical problems of cognition and memory in everyday life - reading assembly instructions supplied with flat-packs of furniture from a major Nordic furniture distributor - Chapter 2 discusses different ways of using visual information, examines different cognitive systems for processing such information, and looks specifically at visual aspects of memory and thinking. A similar approach is taken in Chapter 3, which, following a discussion of how people perceive and understand action events, goes on to examine research on memory for actions, in particular whether we remember actions in the same way that we remember visually or verbally presented information. Chapter 4 deals with an aspect of memory that has received little attention in cognitive psychology, olfactory memory, and discusses the possible usefulness of olfactory memory tests in forensic contexts, especially with children. The eyewitness angle is followed up in Chapter 5, which reviews research on the development of autobiographical memory and presents a new model of memory development.
   Everyday memory episodes may be recorded privately or under social conditions, and retrieved privately or under social conditions. Social context factors may thus affect memory encoding as well as retrieval, and social factors may or may not be reflected in the content, quality and accuracy of episodic memory. Chapter 6 on collaborative memory examines the theoretical and practical implications of research on the episodic memory performances by dyads and small groups, guided by the question of whether we remember better or worse when tested with fellow eyewitnesses. Chapter 7 discusses how memory illusions and false memories may arise in everyday contexts under the influence of social factors.
   It is a common observation that people like to reminisce about their common past, but there is little systematic research on the dynamics of this activity. Chapter 8 presents research based on a new questionnaire con¬structed to measure proneness to reminiscence. Chapter 9 takes a different approach to individual differences in memory, discussing various conceptions of memory skill and different types of memory expertise, with examples from several areas that are usually not covered in treatments of expertise, such as visual learning, orienteering and speech reading. And what happens when memory fails? This is the topic of Chapter 10, which discusses different types of compensatory mechanisms, used by special populations of people who for various reasons have memory problems.
   The authors of this volume come from six different countries; thus illus¬trations of everyday memories could be drawn from and checked against different sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds. The illustrations cited were chosen to be representative of everyday situations we all are familiar with, but there is, in many of the chapters, a distinct Scandinavian-European leaning in the choice of illustrative examples - examples that might be novel for the general reader. That should not be a disadvantage.

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