50 years of research sparked by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968).

In this article we review the framework proposed in 1968 by Atkinson and Shiffrin. We discuss the prior context that led to its production, including the advent of cognitive and mathematical modeling, its principal concepts, the subsequent refinements and elaborations that followed, and the way that the framework influenced other researchers to test the ideas and, in some cases, propose alternatives. The article illustrates the large amount of research and the large number of memory models that were directly influenced by this chapter over the past 50 years.

The effect of perceptual information on output interference.

Retrieval from episodic memory has consequences (Malmberg, Lehman, Annis, Criss, & Shiffrin, The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 61; 285-313, 2014). In some cases, the consequences are beneficial, as in the improvement in memory for items that were already retrieved (Izawa, 1970, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 83(2, Pt.1), 340-344; Izawa, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 89(1): 10-21, 1971; Roediger & Karpicke, Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255, 2006).

Release from output interference in recognition memory: A test of the attention hypothesis.

Retrieval results in both costs and benefits to episodic memory. Output interference (OI) refers to the finding that episodic memory accuracy decreases with increasing test trials. Release from OI is the restoration of original accuracy at some point during the test.

Models that allow us to perceive the world more accurately also allow us to remember past events more accurately via differentiation.

Differentiation is a theory that originally emerged from the perception literature and proposes that with experience, the representation of stimuli becomes more distinct from or less similar to the representation of other stimuli. In recent years, the role of differentiation has played a critical role in models of memory. Differentiation mechanisms have been implemented in episodic memory models by assuming that information about new experiences with a stimulus in a particular context accumulates in a single memory trace and these updated memory traces become more distinct from the representations of other stimuli.

The role of mnemonic processes in pure-target and pure-foil recognition memory.

Surprisingly, response patterns in a recognition memory test are very similar regardless of whether the test list contains both targets and foils or just one class of items. To better understand these effects, we evaluate performance over the course of testing. Output interference (OI) is the decrease in performance across test trials due to an increase in noise caused by encoded test items.

Sources of interference in recognition testing.

Recognition memory accuracy is harmed by prior testing (a.k.a.

Improving memory after environmental context change: a strategy of "preinstatement".

A change in environmental context between study and test can produce detrimental effects on memory. For instance, when a change in the environment occurs after an event, memory for the event declines. However, the negative effects of context change can be eliminated when participants are provided with contextual cues.

A buffer model of memory encoding and temporal correlations in retrieval.

Atkinson and Shiffrin's (1968) dual-store model of memory includes structural aspects of memory along with control processes. The rehearsal buffer is a process by which items are kept in mind and long-term episodic traces are formed. The model has been both influential and controversial.

Visual search enhances subsequent mnemonic search.

We examined how the performance of a visual search task while studying a list of to-be-remembered words affects subsequent memory for those words by humans. Previous research had suggested that episodic context encoding is facilitated when the study phase of a memory experiment requires, or otherwise encourages, a visual search for the to-be-remembered stimuli, and theta-band oscillations are more robust when animals are searching their environment. Moreover, hippocampal theta oscillations are positively correlated with learning in animals.

Overcoming the negative consequences of interference from recognition memory testing.

Theories of why humans forget have been challenged by the newly discovered list-length/output-interference paradox, in which--under certain testing conditions--learning is not harmed by the amount of verbal material studied, whereas retrieval of that material becomes more difficult with increases in the number of items tested. The latter finding is known as output interference, and the results of the experiment reported here indicate that a release from output interference is obtained when the nature of the items is changed during testing. Specifically, when participants are asked to recognize items from two categories, output interference is minimized when items from each category are tested separately in large blocks.

On the relationship between memory and perception: sequential dependencies in recognition memory testing.

Many models of recognition are derived from models originally applied to perception tasks, which assume that decisions from trial to trial are independent. While the independence assumption is violated for many perception tasks, we present the results of several experiments intended to relate memory and perception by exploring sequential dependencies in recognition. The findings from these experiments disconfirm the independence assumption for recognition memory.

Overcoming the effects of intentional forgetting.

The long-term effects of the compartmentalization of task-irrelevant memories were investigated using a directed forgetting procedure. Many models tacitly assume the persistence of the costs and benefits of directed forgetting or otherwise fail to predict what factors might reduce or eliminate them. In contrast, a retrieving effectively from memory model (REM; Lehman & Malmberg, 2009) predicts that intentional forgetting should only be observed for free recall when temporal context is used to probe memory.

A global theory of remembering and forgetting from multiple lists.

Forgetting is frustrating, usually because it is unintended. Other times, one may purposely attempt to forget an event. A global theory of recognition and free recall that explains both types of forgetting and remembering from multiple list experiments is presented.

Discriminating between changes in bias and changes in accuracy for recognition memory of emotional stimuli.

A debate has emerged as to whether recognition of emotional stimuli is more accurate or more biased than recognition of nonemotional stimuli. Teasing apart changes in accuracy versus changes in bias requires a measurement model. However, different models have been adopted by different researchers, and this has contributed to the current debate.

Recognition memory: a review of the critical findings and an integrated theory for relating them.

The development of formal models has aided theoretical progress in recognition memory research. Here, I review the findings that are critical for testing them, including behavioral and brain imaging results of single-item recognition, plurality discrimination, and associative recognition experiments under a variety of testing conditions. I also review the major approaches to measurement and process modeling of recognition.

On the flexibility and the fallibility of associative memory.

We report the results of four experiments in which we explored the flexibility and fallibility of associative recognition memory. In each experiment, pairs were studied one or more times, and the task was to discriminate intact from rearranged pairs. The critical findings are that the pattern of false alarm rates was dependent on the nature of the recognition procedure (e.

Modeling the effects of verbal and nonverbal pair strength on associative recognition.

Operations that improve the accuracy of associative recognition can do so in qualitatively different ways. Increasing repetitions and study time increases hit rates but has small effects on false alarm rates, and the specific patterns of false alarms are dependent on the stimuli (e.g.

The influence of averaging and noisy decision strategies on the recognition memory ROC.

Many single- and dual-process models of recognition memory predict that the ratings and remember-know receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) are the same, but Rotello, Macmillan, and Reeder (2004) reported that the slopes of the remember-know and ratings z-transformed ROCs (zROCs) are different The authors show that averaging introduces nonlinearities to the form of the zROC and that ratings and remember-know zROCs are indistinguishable when constructed in a conventional manner. The authors show, further, that some nonoptimal decision strategies have a distinctive, nonlinear effect on the form of the single-process continuous-state zROC. The conclusion is that many factors having nothing to do with the nature of recognition memory can affect the shape of zROCs, and that therefore, the shape of the zROC does not, alone, characterize different memory models.

The "one-shot" hypothesis for context storage.

In 3 experiments motivated by the implicit memory literature, the authors investigated the effects of different strengthening operations on the list strength effect (LSE) for explicit free recall, an effect posited by R. M. Shiffrin, R.

High-level effects of masking on perceptual identification.

The extent to which visual form versus higher-level information is used to identify briefly flashed words is assessed in a perceptual identification task. In this task, a word is briefly flashed, post-masked, and a decision is made between two alternatives. The availability of visual (e.

Turning up the noise or turning down the volume? On the nature of the impairment of episodic recognition memory by midazolam.

E. Hirshman, J. Fisher, T.

Modeling the effects of repetitions, similarity, and normative word frequency on old-new recognition and judgments of frequency.

Judgments of frequency for targets (old items) and foils (similar; dissimilar) steadily increase as the number of times a target is studied increases, but discrimination of targets from similar foils does not steadily improve, a phenomenon termed registration without learning (D. L. Hintzman & T.

The effect of normative context variability on recognition memory.

According to some theories of recognition memory (e.g., S.

The word frequency effect for recognition memory and the elevated-attention hypothesis.

Empirical tests were conducted on the elevated-attention hypothesis that low-frequency (LF) words are better recognized than high-frequency (HF) words because LF words attract more attention than do HF words (e.g., Glanzer & Adams, 1990).

Feature frequency effects in recognition memory.

Rare words are usually better recognized than common words, a finding in recognition memory known as the word-frequency effect. Some theories predict the word-frequency effect because they assume that rare words consist of more distinctive features than do common words (e.g.