Human Memory and the Learning Process: Selected Papers of Richard C. Atkinson
What follows is the Preface and Table of Contents for a book entitled Human Memory and the Learning Process: Selected Papers of Richard C. Atkinson,
assembled by Russian colleagues, translated into Russian, and published in 1980 by the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences.
The reference is Human Memory and the Learning Process: Selected Papers of Richard C. Atkinson, edited by Y. Zabrodin and B. F. Lomov. Moscow: Progress Publishing House, 1980.
Human Memory and the Learning Process
(Entire Collection)  (13MB)
The papers in this volume deal with fundamental research on human
memory, perception and cognition as well as more applied work on
school learning and the instructional process. A theme running
through all of these papers is a close interplay between theory and
experimentation. Whenever possible, the theory is stated in formal
terms either as a mathematical model or as a computer program;
predictions are then derived from the theory; the predictions are used
to design an appropriate experiment; the experiment is conducted and
data collected; discrepancies are identified between theoretical
predictions and experimental outcomes; the theory is revised to take
account of the discrepancies; and the cycle of events is repeated.
This cycle characterizes the scientific method whether in psychology
or any other field of science. The interplay between theory and
experiment is strengthened to the extent that the theory is stated in
formal terms and can be used to identify differences between observed
and predicted behavior.
It is a great honor and a pleasure for me to have some of my
papers translated into Russian and published in the Soviet Union. I
have been in close contact with psychologists and mathematicians in
the Soviet Union since my first visit there in 1960 and these
exchanges have proved to be invaluable. Discussions in the 1960’s
with Soviet scientists were influential in my use of control theory as
a method for optimizing the instructional process, and the first
public lecture that I gave on my theory of long- and short-term memory
was in Moscow at the 1968 meetings of the International Congress of
Psychology. In recent years, I have maintained close relations with
Professor Lomov and other members of the Institute of Psychology of
the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences in Moscow; members of the institute
have been in my laboratory at Stanford University several times and I
have been a visitor at the Institute on at least four occasions. The
understanding and colleagueship between American psychologists and
their Soviet counterparts is as close as that of any two nations.
Both the science of psychology and relations between our two countries
benefit by this close interchange. I hope that the Soviet readers of
this volume will share with me my excitement for research in
psychology and that together we can expand the frontiers of the
psychological sciences.
Richard C. Atkinson
Washington, D.C.
February 22, 1979
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