4 Replies to “Psychology 3717 – Models of Memory”

  1. Question, please: Are the assumptions in the model supposed to be explanatory (if this is the way memory works, we will get these results), or are they just predictive–as in astronomy, when they postulated all those extra little cycles to predict planetary motion, not so much as an explanatiion, but as a way of figuring out what would be where when? (I hope I’m making some sense here!)

  2. By the way, according to my Oxford American Dictionaries widget, isolatable is indeed a word, a derivative of “isolate” (verb & noun).

  3. It really depends on the model. The best sort of do both. If you can predict results, you are probably on the right track as to how memory actually works.

  4. Thank you.

    I asked because, although I am now all arty in book design, I studied Poli Sci (life happens), and remember studying economic models that all began with “Assuming a perfect market system”, which of course never has, will, or could exist, and being told that well, these things sometimes work predictively without actually describing real behavior. (They mostly didn’t so much work, either.) Ditto early city simulations (how Sim City was born, as an urban studies model!), and some game theory models, with interesting results but not horribly explanatory, since people don’t really make decisions so rationally, on the whole.

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