The Search for Learning and Memory Mechanisms

Abstract

The understanding of behavior usually moves along several different but, hopefully, related tracks. One track involves investigations of the behaviors themselves. Another track involves formulations, theories, about the processes involved in these behaviors. At different times in the history of this search for understanding, these two tracks have assumed different magnitudes and slopes, so the train of understanding has moved at different speeds and shifted from track to track. At the present time, investigations and formulations are both moving rapidly. However, effective engineering requires some appreciation of the route previously traveled. Many eminent philosophers, psychologists, and biologists have dealt with the problems of learning and memory. In the context of the present volume, we are primarily concerned with the types of formulations that these individuals have suggested as mechanisms associated with the understanding of learning and memory.