Cover of book

Surprenant, A. M., & Neath, I. (2009). Principles of memory. New York: Psychology Press

ISBN: 978-1-84169-422-1

From the first chapter

[I]n over 100 years of scientific research on memory, and nearly 50 years after the so-called cognitive revolution, we have nothing that really constitutes a widely accepted and frequently cited law of memory, and perhaps only one generally accepted principle.... The purpose of this monograph is to propose 7 principles of human memory that apply to all memory regardless of the type of information, the type of processing, the hypothetical system supporting the memory, or the time scale.

[H]ere are our seven principles (and some corollaries) of memory:

  1. The Cue Driven Principle: In all situations, the act of remembering begins with a cue which initiates the retrieval process.
  2. The Encoding-Retrieval Principle: Memory depends on the relation between the conditions at encoding and the conditions at retrieval. Accepting this principle entails accepting four consequences:
    1. Items do not have intrinsic mnemonic properties
    2. Processes do not have intrinsic mnemonic properties
    3. Cues do not have intrinsic mnemonic properties
    4. Forgetting is due to extrinsic factors
  3. The Cue Overload Principle: Cues can become associated with more and more items at various encoding opportunities, thus reducing their effectiveness at the time of retrieval.
  4. The Reconstruction Principle: Memory, like other cognitive processes, is inherently constructive. Information present at encoding, cues at retrieval, memories of previous recollections, indeed any possibly useful information are all exploited to construct a response to a cue.
  5. The Impurity Principle: One consequence of the reconstruction principle is the realization that on any task, people recruit and use a wide variety of information and processes. Therefore, tasks are not pure and processes are not pure and inferences based on the assumption that a task taps a particular memory system or requires only one particular process are likely to be misguided.
  6. The Relative Distinctiveness Principle: Items will be well-remembered to the extent that they are more distinct than competing items at the time of retrieval
  7. The Specificity Principle: Those tasks that require specific information about the context in which memories were formed are more vulnerable to interference or forgetting than those that rely on more general information

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