• to introduce the integrated theoretical approach towards research on learning and memory;
• to survey classical and modern theories of learning and memory from a cognitive perspective;
• to present influential experimental paradigms for study of basic phenomena as well as successes in their computational reinstatement;
• to develop skills for experimentation on learning and memory under controlled conditions;
• to promote critical thinking about methodological issues in research on learning and memory.

• demonstrate knowledge of the fundamental concepts related to learning processes and human memory functioning;
• evaluate different theories of human memory;
• understand and critically evaluate simulational models of learning and memory;
• generate ideas and formulate them as experimental hypotheses;
• design and conduct experimental studies on learning and memory.

Learning and Memory: An Integrated Approach, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

[HM] Baddeley A. (1990),

Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.

[CP] Eysenk M.W. & M. T. Keane (1995),

Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.

[HM] Klatzky R. (1975),

Human memory: Structures and processes.

[MS] Gerganov (1987),

Memory & Semantics (in bulgarian), Sofia.

• learning and memory - basic paradigm;
• human memory as an information processing system;
• forgetting and retrieval;
• PDP models of learning and memory;
• cognitive organization of human memory; representation of knowledge and events;
• variety of memory systems - declarative/procedural, explicit/implicit, episodic/semantic;
• types of processing - shallow/deep, data/conceptually driven;
• methodological issues in research on semantic memory.

• Chapter 5 # 1. of Anderson J.R. (1995) Learning and Memory: An Integrated Approach, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Chapter 1 of Gerganov (1987) Memory & Semantics.

Additional reading:

• Chapter 3 # 5 and Chapter 4 # 8 of Mateev S. (1981) Psychophysics: Ideas & Methods, Sofia, BAS.
• Chapter 11 of Klatzky R. (1975) Human memory: Structures and processes.

Topic 2: Cognitive organization of human memory: structures and processes.
Required reading:

• Chapter 6 of Eysenk M.W. & M. T. Keane (1995) Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Chapter 1 of Gerganov (1987) Memory & Semantics.

Additional reading:

• Part Two, Chapter 7 of Crider A.B., Goethals G.R. Kavanah R.D. Solomon P.R. (1989) Psychology, Glenview: Illinois.

Topic 3: Sensory and short-term memory. Sperling's partial report procedure & Peterson's experimental paradigm. Atkinson & Shiffrin (1978) model of memory.
Required reading:

• Chapter 1. of Anderson J. R. (1995) Learning and Memory: An Integrated Approach, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Chapter 2 of Gerganov (1987) Memory & Semantics (in bulgarian).
• Chapters 2 of Baddeley A. (1990) Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.

Additional reading:

• Peterson L. R. (1975), Short-term memory, In: Contemporary Psychology.

Topic 4: Rehearsal systems and acquisition of memories. Comparison of theories about the subsystem mediating the transition between sensory and long-term memory, a) short-term memory, (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1978), b) working memory, (Baddeley 1986), c) transient memories, (J.R. Anderson, (1995). Characteristics of transient rehearsal systems.
Required reading:

• Chapters 3, 4 & 5 of Baddeley A. (1990) Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Chapter 5 of Anderson J. R. (1995) Learning and Memory: An Integrated Approach, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Additional reading:

• Free reading from Psychological Review, Memory and Cognition, Cognition etc. 1980 -1990 issues.

Topic 5: Theories about forgetting: trace decay hypothesis (the Power Law of forgetting), interference (Underwood) and retrieval failure (Tulving). Proactive and retroactive interference: experimental paradigm, basic findings of Underwood, Anderson and Baddeley, implications for education.
Required reading:

• Chapter 7 of of Anderson J. R. (1995) Learning and Memory: An Integrated Approach, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Chapter 11 of Baddeley A. (1990) Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Dyne, A. M., Humphreys, M. S., Bain, J. D. & Pike, R. (1990). Associative interference effects in recognition and recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 16, 813-824.

Additional reading:

• Underwood B.J. (1975), Forgetting, In: Contemporary Psychology.
• Ch 9 of Klatzky R. (1975) Human memory: Structures and processes.

Topic 6: Paired-associate learning paradigm. Application to foreign language acquisition. Sources of interference. Simulational models of paired associate-learning - CHARM (Metcalfe, Murdoch), Matrix models of Humphreys et al, ACT (Anderson J. R).
Required reading:

• Chapter 4 of Gerganov (1987) Memory & Semantics (in bulgarian).
• Metcalfe Eich J. (1982). A composite associative recall model. Psychological Review, 89, 627-661.

Additional reading:

• Metcalfe, J. (1991). Recognition failure and the composite memory trace in CHARM. Psychological Review, 98, 529-553.
• Murdock, B.B. (1982). A theory for the storage and retrieval of item and associative information. Psychological Review, 89, 609-626.
• Murdock, B.B. (1993).TODAM2: A model for the storage and retrieval of item, associative and serial-order information. Psychological Review, 100, 183-203.
• Humphreys, M.S., Bain, J.D. & Pike, R. (1989). Different ways to cue a coherent memory system: A theory of episodic, semantic and procedural tasks. Psychological Review, 96, 208-233.
• Pike R. (1984) Comparison of convolution and matrix distributed memory systems for associative recognition and recall. Psychological Review, 91, 281-294.

Topic 7: Connectionist models of learning. Learning and generalization in connectionist models. (McClelland, Rumelhart et al). Internal representations in multilayer networks (Rumelhart, Hinton & Williams). Catastrophic interference in connectionist models (McCloskey & Cohen, Ratcliff).
Required reading:

• Chapters 8 & 17 of Rumelhart, McClelland and the PDP Research Group (1986). Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol. 1 & 2, MIT Press.
• Chapter 14 of Baddeley A. (1990) Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Racliff R. (1990) Connectionists models of memory: Constraints imposed by learning and forgetting functions. Psychological Review, 97, 285-308.
• McRae K. & Hetherington P. (1993) Catastrophic interference is eliminated in pretrained networks. Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Additional reading:

• Orchard G. & Cowie R. (1995) The psychology of catastrophic interference in backpropagation nets. Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Processing, Limassol, Cyprus.
• McCloskey M. & N.J. Cohen (1989) Catastrophic interference in connectionist networks: The sequential learning problem. In G.H.Bower(Ed), The psychology of learning and motivation . New York: Academic Press.

Topic 8: Effects of semantic memory: knowledge acquisition, concepts and prototypes, semantic relatedness effect, hierarchical organization.
Required reading:

• Chapter 13 of Baddeley A. (1990) Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Chapters 9 & 10 of Eysenk M.W. & M. T. Keane (1995) Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Chapters 5 & 6 of Gerganov (1987), Memory & Semantics, Sofia.

Additional reading:

• Free reading from Psychological Review, Memory and Cognition, Cognition etc. 1990 -1997 issues.

Topic 9: Theories and models of semantic memory of Quillian, Anderson & Bower, Kintch, etc. Symbolic, connectionist and hybrid approaches to modelling semantic memory effects.
Required reading:

• Chapters 8 & 17 of Rumelhart, McClelland and the PDP Research Group (1986). Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol. 1 & 2, MIT Press.
• Chapter 14 of Baddeley A. (1990) Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Chapter 8 Klatzky R. (1975) Human memory: Structures and processes.

Additional reading:

• Gallinari P. (1995) Training of modular neural networks. In: M. A. Arbib (Ed.) The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks. THE MIT PRESS, Cambridge: Massachusets, p. 582-585.
• Jordan M. I. & Jacobs R.A. (1995) Modular and hierarchical learning systems. In: M. A. Arbib (Ed.) The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks. THE MIT PRESS, Cambridge: Massachusets, p. 579-582.
• Kokinov B. & Yoveva M. (1996). Context effectson problem Solving. In: Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Topic 10: Methodological issues in research on semantic memory: Experimental techniques for testing hypotheses about the structure of semantic memory. Cluster analysis of data.
Required reading:

• Friendly M.L. (1977) In search of the M-Gram: The structure of organization in free recall.
• Chapter 7 of Gerganov (1987) Memory & Semantics, Sofia.

Additional reading:

• Torgerson (1968) Theory and methods of scaling.

Topic 11: Representation of events and memory in natural contexts: autobiographical memory, episodic memory,- eyewitness testimony, trace-loss hypothesis of Loftus, context-dependent retrieval.
Required reading:

• Chapter 12 of Baddeley A. (1990) Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Chapter 8 of Eysenk M.W. & M. T. Keane (1995) Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• McCloskey M. & Zaragoza M. (1985) Misleading postevent information and memory for events: Arguments and evidence against memory impairment hypotheses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 114, p.1-16.

Additional reading:

• Lindsay D.S. (1990) Misleading suggestions can impair eyewitness' ability to remember event details. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 16, No 6, 1077-1083.

Topic 12: Implicit and explicit memory. Studies of Schacter, Jacoby, Roediger etc, 1990 - 1994. The process dissociation experimental paradigm of Jacoby et all 1993.
Required reading:

• Chapters 6 & 7 of Eysenk M.W. & M. T. Keane (1995) Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Part Two, Chapter 3 of Crider A.B., Goethals G.R. Kavanah R.D. Solomon P.R. (1989) Psychology, Glenview: Illinois.
• Gardiner, J. M. & Java, R. I. (1993). Recognising and remembering. In: A.F. Collins, S.E. Cathercole, M.A. Conway, & P.E. Morris (Eds), Theories of Memory. Hove: Erlbaum, 163-188.

Additional reading:

• Hamann, S.B. (1990). Level-of-processing effects in conceptually driven implicit tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 16, 970-977.
• Jacoby, L.L., Toth, J.P. & Yonelinas, A.P. (1993). Separating conscious and unconscious influences of memory: Measuring recollection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 122, 139-154.
• Jacoby, L.L., Toth, J.P. Yonelinas, A.P. & Debner, J.A. (1994). The relationship between conscious and unconscious influences: Independence or redundancy? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General ,122, 216-219.
• Jacoby, L.L., Yonelinas, A.P. & Jennings J.M. (in press).The relation between conscious and unconscious (automatic) influences: A declaration of independence. In: J. Cohen & J.W. Schooler (Eds.), Scientific approaches to the question of consciousness., Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Paller K. A. (1990) Recall and stem-completion priming have different electrophysiological correlates and are modified differentially by directed forgetting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 16, No 6, 1021-1032.
• Roediger, III, H. L., & Blaxton, T.A. (1987). Effects of varying modality, surface features, and retention interval on priming in word fragment completion. Memory & Cognition, 15, 379-388.
• Roediger, III, H. L., Weldon, M. S., & Challis, B. H. (1989). Explaining dissociations between implicit and explicit measures of retention. In: H. L. Roediger, III, & F. I. M. Craik (Eds) Varieties of Memory and Consciousness.: Essays in Honour of Endel Tulving. Hilsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 3-42.

Topic 13: Current studies on the episodic/semantic memory distinction, neurophysiological and psychological evidence, connectionist accounts of O'Reilly, McClelland, McNaughton, 1994.
Required reading:

• McClelland, J.L., McNaughton & O'Reilly, R.C. (March, 1994). Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: Insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Technical report PDP.CNS.94.1, Carnegie Mellon University & University of Arisona.

Additional reading:

• O'Reilly, R.C. & McClelland, J.L., (June, 1994). Hippocampal conjunctive encoding, storage and recall: Avoiding a tradeoff. Technical report PDP.CNS.94.4, Carnegie Mellon University & University of Arisona.
• Humphreys, M.S., Bain, J.D. & Pike, R. (1989). Different ways to cue a coherent memory system: A theory of episodic, semantic and procedural tasks. Psychological Review, 96, 208-233.

Topic 14: Models of retrieval: probabilistic models of retrieval, the retrieval independence assumption,- generate-recognize theories (Bahrick, 1970), encoding specificity principle (Tulving),- recognition failure function (Tulving), dual-route to memory model (Jones, 1990).
Required reading:

• Chapter 11 of Baddeley A. (1990) Human Memory: Theory & Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Chapter 6 of Eysenk M.W. & M. T. Keane (1995) Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• Bahrick, H.P. (1970). Two-phase model for prompted recall. Psychological Review, 77, 215-222.
• Jones, G. V. (1987). Independence and exclusivity among psychological processes: Implications for the structure of recall. Psychological Review, 94, 229-235.

Additional reading:

• Flexser, A. J., & Tulving, E. (1978). Retrieval independence in recognition and recall. Psychological Review, 85, 153-171.
• Flexser, A. J., & Tulving, E. (1993). Recognition-failure constraints and the average maximum. Psychological Review, 100, 149-153.
• Tulving, E., & Flexser, A. J. (1992). On the nature of the Tulving-Wiseman function. Psychological Review, 99, 543-546.
• Tulving, E. & Thomson, D. M. (1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review, 80, 352-378.
• Metcalfe, J. (1991). Recognition failure and the composite memory trace in CHARM. Psychological Review, 98, 529-553.

Topic 15: Current research issues on modularity of memory, psychological evidence, models and accounts within cognitive science - final discussion.
Required reading:

• Chapter 7 of Eysenk M.W. & M. T. Keane (1995) Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.
• McClelland, J.L., McNaughton & O'Reilly, R.C. (March, 1994). Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: Insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Technical report PDP.CNS.94.1, Carnegie Mellon University & University of Arisona.
• Tulving, E., Schacter, D. L. & Stark, H. A. (1982). Priming effects in word-fragment completion are independent of recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 8, 336-342.

Additional reading:

• Hirst, W., Johnson, M.K., Phelps, E.A., Piers, C., Morral, A. & Volpe, B.T. (1988). More on recognition and recall in amnesics. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 14, 758-762.
• Dimitrova M. (1996) Compound processes in recall: Some evidence in support of modularity of memory. In: Kokinov B.(Ed.) Perspectives on Cognitive Science, Vol. 2, NBU, Sofia, 209-217.

• homework assignment - essay writing on a theme and seminar presentation - 35%
• written examination - 55%