Information Processing and Memory

Information processing is a view of cognitive development that is based on
the premise that complex cognitive skills develop as the product of the integration
of a hierarchy of more basic skills obtained through life experience
and learning. According to this view, prerequisite skills are mastered and
form the foundation for more and more complex skills.
Information-processing theories emerged as psychologists began to draw
comparisons between the way computers operate and the way humans use
logic and rules about the world as they develop. Humans use these rules for
processing information. New rules may be added and old rules modified
throughout childhood and adulthood as more information is obtained
from worldly interactions. The cognitive changes that occur throughout
adult life, as more useful and accurate rules are learned, are every bit as important
as the cognitive advances that occurred during childhood, as long as
the basic rules acquired in childhood were not distorted by aberrant experiences.
Each advance refines the ability to process information. Elizabeth F. Loftus points out that the terms “cognition” and “information processing”
have supplanted the term “thinking” among modern cognitive scientists.
Similar efforts have been made to redefine other human abilities such as
problem solving (by H. A. Simon) and intelligence (by Robert Sternberg) in
order to describe greater specificity of function.
Researchers have spent much time and effort defining and redefining
memory constructs, although theorists remain in the early stages of understanding
memory. Much debate has focused on naturalistic versus laboratory
methodologies, with few resolutions as to how the results of both can
contribute to a permanent knowledge base of memory.
The mediation school of thought suggests theoretical mechanisms of encoding,
retention, and retrieval to explain memory functioning. Consequently,
concerted efforts have been made to attribute memory changes
across the life span to the specific deterioration of such mechanisms. Researchers
continue to debate the importance, even existence, of such constructs.
Similarly, the dichotomy of long-term versus short-term memory
continues to be debated. In order to test the empirical validity of such theories,
constructs must be able to be disproved if false, and these metaphorical
constructs have proved difficult or impossible to test because of their abstract
nature.
The greatest controversy in memory research focuses on laboratory versus
naturalistic experiments; some researchers, such as M. R. Banaji and
R. G. Crowder, state that naturalistic experiments have yielded no new principles
and no new methods of memory research and should be abandoned.
Others, such as H. P. Bahrick, claim that the naturalistic approach has provided
in ten years what the laboratory has not in a hundred years. Banaji and
Crowder criticize naturalistic experiments for their lack of control and thus
their lack of generalizability. Confining a study to a specific population in a
contrived laboratory setting, however, does not seem to generalize any further.
S. J. Ceci and Urie Bronfenbrenner emphasize the need to focus on the
process of understanding, whatever that process might be. As Endel Tulving
notes, the polemics that have ensued from this debate are not going to advance
the science of memory. He concludes that there is no reason to believe
that there is only one correct way of studying memory.