given both the prior knowledge and the imagery instructions did recall sub-
stantially more new facts than did subjects who did not have both the prior
knowledge and the techniques (i.e., imagery) for using that knowledge to learn
and remember new information.
The better predictor of memory for novel information, then, is a person’s de-
gree of expertise in that domain (provided the person knows how to use the
knowledge for learning and remembering) and not the person’s general intel-
lectual level or memorizing ability for unrelated information. The main practi-
cal implication is that people develop good memory, not to the extent that they
become better memorizers, but to the extent that they develop expertise in
domains for which it is important to remember details accurately.
By way of summarizing this section, let me suggest how a student can make
use of the material I have discussed. Suppose you must study this chapter on
memory in preparation for an exam, and so are required to learn a lot of factual
details. What can you do to make the chapter more memorable? Just repeatedly
reading the facts will not in itself enhance your memory for this chapter very
much. Instead, you must first look for the themes and patterns that serve to
organize the material presented in the chapter. For example, the chapter pre-
sents two points of view about memory, the record-keeping theory and the
constructionist theory, and argues that the constructionist theory is superior.
You must then try to understand these themes by relating them to what you
already know. You might note that the record-keeping theory is similar to how
books are stored in and retrieved from a library. You should then attempt to
figure out for each piece of information how it makes a distinctive contribution
to the thesis. You might ask what unique insight each experiment makes con-
cerning the predictions of the constructionist theory. Finally, and to anticipate
the next section, you should practice studying the material in a way similar to
the way you are going to be tested. If you know that the test will be an essay
test, then write out answers to essay questions. Remember, human memory is
designed to anticipate the future, not recapitulate the past.
14.3 Recollecting the Past
So far I have focused on how cognitive systems change as a result of experi-
ences. Now I wish to change the focus to the cognitive processes responsible for
recollecting a past event. What is a good model of recollection?
Record-Keeping and Constructionist Models of Recollecting the Past
The record-keeping approach claims that recollecting the past means searching
through a storehouse of records of past events until the target record is
retrieved. Finding or ‘‘reading’’ the memory record is like reexperiencing the
past event. The search process is thought to be guided by information in the
current environment that acts as a sort of address for the location of the target
record. The search through the records need not be haphazard, because the
records may be organized, much the way books in a library are organized by
content.
The constructionist approach to memory claims that recollecting the past is
essentially a process of reconstructing the past from information in the current
332 R. Kim Guenther