/ Memory & Cognition Volume 47 · Number 4 · May 2019 Special Issue: Recognizing Five Decades of Cumulative The role of control processes in temporal Progress in Understanding Human Memory and semantic contiguity and its Control Processes Inspired by Atkinson M.K. Healey · M.G. Uitvlugt 719 and Shiffrin (1968) Auditory distraction does more than disrupt rehearsal Guest Editors: Kenneth J. Malmberg· processes in children's serial recall Jeroen G. W. Raaijmakers ·Richard M. Shiffrin A.M. AuBuchon · C.l. McGill · E.M. Elliott 738 50 years of research sparked by Atkinson The effect of working memory maintenance and Shiffrin (1968) on long-term memory K.J. Malmberg · J.G.W. Raaijmakers · R.M. Shiffrin 561 J.K. Hartshorne· T. Makovski 749 · From ·short-term store to multicomponent working List-strength effects in older adults in recognition memory: The role of the modal model and free recall A.D. Baddeley · G.J. Hitch · R.J. Allen 575 L. Sahakyan 764 Central tendency representation and exemplar Verbal and spatial acquisition as a function of distributed matching in visual short-term memory practice and code-specific interference C. Dube 589 A.P. Young· A.F. Healy· M. Jones· L.E. Bourne Jr. 779 Item repetition and retrieval processes in cued recall: Dissociating visuo-spatial and verbal working memory: Analysis of recall-latency distributions It's all in the features Y. Jang · H. Lee 792 ~1 . Poirier· J.M. Yearsley · J. Saint-Aubin· C. Fortin· G. Gallant · D. Guitard 603 Testing the primary and convergent retrieval model of recall: Recall practice produces faster recall Interpolated retrieval effects on list isolation: success but also faster recall failure IndiYiduaLdifferences in working memory capacity W.J. Hopper · D.E. Huber 816 C.~. Wahlheim · T.R. Alexander · M.J. Kane 619 A strength-based mirror effect persists even when The effects of Hebb repetition learning and temporal criterion shifts are unlikely grouping in immediate serial recall of spatial location G.J. Koop · A.H. Criss· A.M. Pardini 842 M. Sukegawa · Y. Ueda· S. Saito 643 Familiarity, recollection, and receiver-operating Control processes in short-term storage: Retrieval characteristic (ROC) curves in recognition memory strategies in immediate recall depend upon the J.F. Juola · A. Caballero-Sanz · A.R. Mufioz-Garcfa · number of words to be recalled J. Botella · M. Suero 855 G. Ward· L. Tan 658 Task effects determine whether recognition memory is mediated discretely or continuously Further articles can be fo und at link.springer.com R.M. McAdoo· K.N. Key · S.D. Gronlund 683 Learning how to exploit sources of information Indexed .4.cacle111ic Search, BIOSIS, CSA/Proquest, Current Abstracts, B. Wyble· M. Hess· R.E. O'Donnell · H. Chen· Current Co11tents I Social & Behavioral Sciences, EBSCO, EMBASE, B. Eitam 696 Google Scholw: OCLC. PubMed/Medline, Science Citation Index £\11w1tlecl 1SciSemd 1J. SCOPUS, Social Science Citation Index, Monitoring the ebb and flow of attention: Social ·iSe ud1. and S11111111on by Serial Solutions. Does controlling the onset of stimuli during encoding enhance memory? Instruction fo r Authors for Mem Cogn are available at www. T.N. Patel· M. Steyvers · A.S. Benjamin 706 ' prin ,, ~r. m I:< 21 . PSYCHONOMIC SOCIETY'" &C A PSYCHONOMIC SOCIETY PUBLICATION www.psychonomic.org Memory & Cognition (2019) 47:561–574 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-00896-7 50 years of research sparked by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) Kenneth J. Malmberg1 & Jeroen G. W. Raaijmakers 2 & Richard M. Shiffrin3 Published online: 28 January 2019 # The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2019 Abstract 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. Keywords Memory models . Recall . Recognition . Implicit memory . Semantic memory This issue commemorates the 50th anniversary of the publi- instances refined and developed the concepts and theory and cation of the chapter by Richard Atkinson and Richard in other instances led researchers and theorists to pose Shiffrin titled BHuman Memory: A Proposed System and Its alternatives. Control Processes.^ Many scientists have been introduced to what is often called Bthe modal model^ in an Introductory Psychology course. Many have cited the chapter in their pub- Background/Context lications, usually in reference to the proposed distinction be- tween short-term memory and long-term memory. However, In the late 1950s and the early 1960s there was a period of the focus of the chapter’s 100 print pages was an investigation tremendous activity in experimental psychology and many of of the role of control processes in all memory systems for both these developments contributed to what would become the storage and retrieval. The chapter contained many studies of Atkinson-Shiffrin theory. Here we will highlight two of these rehearsal in particular and used careful modeling to demon- developments. First, there was what is nowadays commonly strate the validity of the concepts. A review of those modeling referred to as the cognitive revolution with its emphasis on efforts reveals them to be state-of-the-art today, uncovering, attentional and decisional processes. The cognitive revolution testing, and verifying fundamental processes of rehearsal, developed hand-in-hand with the flourishing of mathematical storage, and retrieval. modeling that allowed learning and memory findings to be In the first part of this article we describe the historical explained elegantly using very simple assumptions (for exam- context for Atkinson and Shiffrin’s chapter, summarize its ple, dating perhaps to Bower, 1961, a number of very precise main concepts, and review briefly the data and the quantitative yet simple mathematical models were developed to explain models that gave support to the theory. In the second part we paired-associate learning results). summarize some of the subsequent developments that in some The cognitive revolution * Kenneth J. Malmberg In the second half of the 1950s researchers in auditory and [email protected] visual perception began to formulate the results of their re- search in terms such as attention, short-term memory, and 1 Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, stages of information processing. An important milestone USA was Broadbent’s Perception and Communication (1958) that 2 Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, summarized a large body of research in (especially) auditory Amsterdam, The Netherlands perception. Broadbent reintroduced concepts such as primary 3 PBS, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA and secondary memory and emphasized the notion of 562 Mem Cogn (2019) 47:561–574 attention as a filtering process. Broadbent also proposed re- and not by how it got there. In the simplest case, the Markov hearsal as a means of reactivating information in primary or chain had only two states: learned and not-learned. Bower short-term memory (Broadbent, 1958, p. 225-242). The view (1961) applied this model to a paired-associate learning task that items were displaced (and hence forgotten) from short- and showed that the model quite precisely accounted for a term memory by new incoming items (rather than by a time- large number of statistics (number of errors, trial of last error, based process of decay) received support from the experi- number of runs of errors, etc.). These results set a very high ments by Waugh and Norman (1965). In these experiments a standard for future modeling efforts. probe-digit recall task was used in which participants were Initial applications of Markov modeling referred to external presented with a long list of digits in which some items were elements that were or were not Bconditioned,^ but the states of repeated. Whenever a repeated item (the probe) was presented the model soon came to reflect memory or learning in short- they had to recall the item that had been presented previously term or long-term states. For example, Atkinson and Crothers immediately after the probe item. Critically, the items were (1964) described a model with four states: a long-term state L presented at either a rate of one per second or four per second, (reflecting that the item is in long-term memory), a short-term separating the retention time from the number of intervening S (reflecting that the item is in short-term memory), a state F items. For example, an interval of 2 s could be filled with (reflecting that the item is forgotten from short-term memory), either two items or with eight items. Recall was determined and an initial state U (reflecting that nothing has been learned almost completely by the number of intervening items rather about this item). In some versions forgetting from the short- than by the number of seconds, strongly supporting a replace- term state was assumed to be a function of the number of other ment and interference account of forgetting in short-term items presented between two presentations of an item. These memory. ideas led fairly directly to the Atkinson-Shiffrin model in While such results might suggest that only a small amount which there were short-term states (one of which was the of information is available at any one time, experiments such rehearsal buffer) from which items were lost when replaced as those from Sperling (1960, now a textbook classic) showed by subsequent items. Whereas early Markov models described that a much larger amount of information is briefly available the transitions through states until a state of permanent storage but is lost very quickly.