Memory

by Alan Baddeley, Michael W. Eysenck, Michael C. Anderson

People seem to be intrigued by memory, and by its sometimes spectacular failure in (for example) people with amnesia. However, students of memory sometimes fail to retain this fascination. The reason is in order to study memory we must carry out carefully-designed experiments, which can seem boring even when they are exciting science. Fortunately, we now know enough about memory to relate laboratory studies to the world beyond. In other words, our scientific knowledge of memory and how it works can help us to explain those aspects of memory that most people find of greatest interest. This book presents a thorough, accessible and appealing overview of the field, written with students in mind, by some of the world's leading researchers. It starts with a brief overview and explanation of the scientific approach to memory before going on to discuss the basic characteristics of the various memory systems and how they work. Summaries of short-term and working memory are followed by chapters on learning, the role of organization in memory, the ways in which our knowledge of the world is stored, retrieval, and on intentional and motivated forgetting. The latter half of the book involves the broader application of our basic understanding of memory, with chapters on autobiographical memory, amnesia, and on memory in childhood and aging. After chapters discussing eyewitness testimony and prospective memory, a final chapter addresses an issue of great importance to students – how to improve your memory. Each chapter of the book is written by one of the three authors, an approach which takes full advantage of their individual expertise, style and personality. This enhances students’ enjoyment of the book, allowing them to share the authors’ own fascination with human memory.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Science, Reference, Textbooks, Neuroscience, Design

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Alan Baddeley is Professor of Psychology at York and one of the world's leading authorities on human memory. He is celebrated for devising the ground-breaking and highly influential working memory model with Graham Hitch in the early 1970s, a model which still proves valuable today in recognising the functions of short-term memory. He was awarded a CBE for his contributions to the study of memory, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, of the British Academy and of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Reviews

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-rounded, even if a tad dated account of human memory, its inner workings, things that go wrong with it, occasionally, and how this stuff is (or, rather, was) studied.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very useful book for those interested in the subject.

A lot is covered in this one, allowing you to gain information in a range of areas. As always, with books like this, I wouldn’t recommend it as your sole referencing point but it is useful alongside other books to help you gain more knowledge on the subject.

[Chauncey]

This is a well-written book on the subject of memory that offers historical perspective, case studies, and an explanation of the foundational experiments (or at least some of the accessible ones) that have led us to understand memory as we do. The text is interspersed with colorful pictures for the visual learner and memory tests for the kinesthetic learner (or the easily bored).

[Kurt H · Rating 1 out of 5]

The material and research presented by the authors were rich and quite insightful. However it is a shame to note that this textbook was INCREDIBLY difficult to read. The chapters written by Dr. Baddeley, although commendable, was poorly suited in comparison to the textbook style writing I've found very readable throughout undergrad. I would frequently find myself frustrated while reading his chapters, as the experience was not too different from rummaging through a conglomeration of research papers clipped together. Not to mention there was plenty of research jargon that was presented without elaboration; indeed, a frustrating experience for students who rely on this text for an intro course. From my experience, better editing could have been done for this textbook (even for the more recent the third edition).

I found frequent typos, mislabeled figures, and difficulty understanding why some key terms had their own definition box, while other equally important terms were only highlighted in italics, without the inclusion of its respective definition box.

Its ironic, that material intended to expand one's understanding of memory has made it so unnecessarily challenging and confusing to encode into ones hippocampal and memory based cortices.

[mkfs · Rating 5 out of 5]

When people talk about how their brain works, they generally mean memory. It's the part of the brain that we notice most, as conscious users, and whose failings we view as either the betrayal of a trusted friend, or as part of the inevitable decline as we slough our youth in a meandering shamble to the grave.

But memory fails all the time. It fails most of the time, but people trust it so much that they never bother to check it. This has huge implications in things like eyewitness testimony.

This book is a textbook at the undergraduate level. It's written like a textbook, meaning the writing is accessible but very redundant and at times a bit patronizing. This is not a driven deep-thinking book like Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. It's not a research-level survey of the state of the art like Memory Reconsolidation. It is a long, clear, and wide-ranging treatment of the topic of memory. Suitable for laymen, but not a popular-science book.

While the presentation can be a bit off-putting, and the writing occasionally awful (one of the authors seems intent on excusing every one of his personal failings by way of neurology), it is a fantastic book. The coverage is broad, the research is up-to-date, and you definitely leave each chapter knowing a lot more about the ol' grey soup between your ears.

[CM · Rating 2 out of 5]

A comprehensive textbook on memory with a focus on psychological,instead of neurobiological, explanation. It's co-written by three experts of the field so they talk quite a lot about their own theories. It's not really a problem (Baddeley's model of working memory is still,after 45 years, the standard) but you can feel they are not really the best judges of their own models.

As a book on this subject, this first edition does a rather poor job in helping the readers to retain the information for later retrieval but the second edition is just much better ,completed with bullet-point summary and review questions. Another problem of this textbook is probably its scarce use of photographs...we don't get any photos for the brain with Alzheimer's disease but only text description?

Just stay away from this first edition.
(You still have to visualize plaques and tangles as the 2nd edition doesn't show photo for these as well....)

[Anna Sochacka · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting, though a littlr bit out of date (especially the part about computers). More about history and theory, less about practical usage.

[Mario Sailer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very comprehensive book with 700 pages of information about memory from a psychological perspective. Its strength is the extensive holistic view with which different theories and methods are explained. But this is also a weakness if you do not happen to be a cognitive psychologist. At times I found it just confusing. I would say that with a loss of a bit of scientific accuracy the content could be compressed into 200 - 300 pages.
What I personally misses besides the crispness was some neurological background information. That said, the book does almost not cover implicit memory which is a result of neurological processes that form it.
If there is an abstract available, I would rather go for that than investing a lot of time digging though this pile of pages again.

[Isabella Abbud · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the worst book ever written on such an interesting topic. The author included so many outdated studies and models to later say they were found unreliable. Why write about it if the findings were not significant and critiqued years later. They made simple components of memory so hard to grasp. The book is hard to read and was not written smoothly. I felt like every section was written by someone who forgot what they wrote in the prior section. Read it for a class and even my teacher was concerned on how boring and repetitive this book was. Had to drop the class because of it.

[Canopus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um bom livro para introdução geral dos conceitos cognitivos, além da exposição de teorias e suas devidas funções. Senti falta serem mais diretos em muitas partes do livro onde por exemplo era citado várias teorias mas isso não terminada em nada concreto. Além de expor alternativas para teorias principais do livro mas citando em um grau de superficialidade sendo melhor não há ter citado.
No mais, foi um ótimo livro.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find this textbook to be very well written overall.

[Douglas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Authors can be rather long winded!

[Martine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for class!

[Faty]

Anderson es el cuñado gracioso de una comida familiar

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

You won‘t catch me complaining about my memory ever again.

[Recensioni in tre parole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coinvolgente. Interessante. Chiarificatore.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a textbook than "a user's guide". I wanted a practical book on improving my memory and what I got was a survey of what psychology has learned about how memories are stored, retrieved and processed over the past 100 years. Only the final chapter dealt with techniques on improving memory, and not in any depth. Check the table of contents to make sure it covers what you want to learn before deciding to buy/read this book.

Also the interior illustrations are over 20 years old- the information may be up to date but it LOOKS dated.

[Fred Tyre]

Read this my Senior year of college for my Senior Project as I was (and still am) fascinated with Artificial Intelligence.