A New York Times Notable Book: A psychologist’s “gripping and thought-provoking” look at how and why our brains sometimes fail us (Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works). In this intriguing study, Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter explores the memory miscues that occur in everyday life, placing them into seven categories: absent-mindedness, transience, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. Illustrating these concepts with vivid examples—case studies, literary excerpts, experimental evidence, and accounts of highly visible news events such as the O. J. Simpson verdict, Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony, and the search for the Oklahoma City bomber—he also delves into striking new scientific research, giving us a glimpse of the fascinating neurology of memory and offering “insight into common malfunctions of the mind” (USA Today). “Though memory failure can amount to little more than a mild annoyance, the consequences of misattribution in eyewitness testimony can be devastating, as can the consequences of suggestibility among pre-school children and among adults with ‘false memory syndrome’ . . . Drawing upon recent neuroimaging research that allows a glimpse of the brain as it learns and remembers, Schacter guides his readers on a fascinating journey of the human mind.” —Library Journal “Clear, entertaining and provocative . . . Encourages a new appreciation of the complexity and fragility of memory.” —The Seattle Times “Should be required reading for police, lawyers, psychologists, and anyone else who wants to understand how memory can go terribly wrong.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A fascinating journey through paths of memory, its open avenues and blind alleys . . . Lucid, engaging, and enjoyable.” —Jerome Groopman, MD “Compelling in its science and its probing examination of everyday life, The Seven Sins of Memory is also a delightful book, lively and clear.” —Chicago Tribune Winner of the William James Book Award

Contrary to popular opinion, contemporary psychology in the USSR is far from being monolithic. It is true that the development of Soviet psychology does have characteristic features which distinguish it from the development of Western (and particularly Anglo-American) psychology. Perhaps the most distinguishing features of Soviet psychology are represented by the pre dominance of the historical-evolutionary approach and the emphasis on integrative physiological mechanisms underlying behavior. The development of Soviet psychological thinking can also be characterized as having been free of the fruitless discussions of mind-body dualism and of dominance by rat-and-pigeon-centered behaviorism. Soviet psychology had the benefit of a rich inheritance from the Sech that laid the foundation for modern psycho enov-Botkin-Pavlov school biology and biological psychiatry. Unfortunately, the politically engendered omnipresent dogmatism during the Lysenko-Stalin era of obscurantism tended to pervert this rich scientific heritage and hindered the development of a diversity of concepts and methods in the behavioral and biological sciences.

Drawing on current research in psychology, a new philosophical account of remembering as imagining the past. In this book, Kourken Michaelian builds on research in the psychology of memory to develop an innovative philosophical account of the nature of remembering and memory knowledge. Current philosophical approaches to memory rest on assumptions that are incompatible with the rich body of theory and data coming from psychology. Michaelian argues that abandoning those assumptions will result in a radically new philosophical understanding of memory. His novel, integrated account of episodic memory, memory knowledge, and their evolution makes a significant step in that direction. Michaelian situates episodic memory as a form of mental time travel and outlines a naturalistic framework for understanding it. Drawing on research in constructive memory, he develops an innovative simulation theory of memory; finding no intrinsic difference between remembering and imagining, he argues that to remember is to imagine the past. He investigates the reliability of simulational memory, focusing on the adaptivity of the constructive processes involved in remembering and the role of metacognitive monitoring; and he outlines an account of the evolution of episodic memory, distinguishing it from the forms of episodic-like memory demonstrated in animals. Memory research has become increasingly interdisciplinary. Michaelian's account, built systematically on the findings of empirical research, not only draws out the implications of these findings for philosophical theories of remembering but also offers psychologists a framework for making sense of provocative experimental results on mental time travel.

The Psychology of Human Memory presents a comprehensive discussion on the principles of human memory. The book is primarily concerned with theories and experiments on the acquisition and use of information. Topics on theoretical ideas that formed the basis for the earliest studies of memory; memory processes; aspects of association theory; capacity limitations; coding processes; types of memories; and applied memory research are also tackled. Psychologists, educators, psychiatrists, and students will find the book a good reference material.

The capacity to represent and think about time, and the capacity to recollect the past are two of the most fundamental and least understood aspects of human cognition and consciousness. This book throws new light on central issues in the study of the mind by uniting, for the first time,psychological and philosophical approaches dealing with the connection between temporal representation and memory. Fifteen specially written essays by leading psychologists and philosophers investigate the way in which time is represented in memory, and the role memory plays in our ability to reasonabout time. They offer insights into current theories of memory processes and of the mechanisms and cognitive abilities underlying temporal judgements, and draw out fundamental issues concerning the phenomenology and epistemology of memory and our understanding of time. The chapters are arrangedinto four sections, each focused on one area of current research: I Keeping Track of Time, and Temporal Representation; II Memory, Awareness and the Past; III Memory and Experience; IV Knowledge and the Past: The Epistemology and Metaphysics of Time. A general introduction gives an overview of thetopics discussed and makes explicit central themes which unify the different philosophical and psychological approaches.

Research on applied memory is one of the most active, interesting and vibrant areas in experimental psychology. This book describes cutting-edge research and applies it to key areas of contemporary investigation: education, the law and neuroscience.