Roediger Henry L
Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA.
Annu Rev Psychol. 2008;59:225-54. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190139.
For 120 years, cognitive psychologists have sought general laws of learning and memory. In this review I conclude that none has stood the test of time. No empirical law withstands manipulation across the four sets of factors that Jenkins (1979) identified as critical to memory experiments: types of subjects, kinds of events to be remembered, manipulation of encoding conditions, and variations in test conditions. Another factor affecting many phenomena is whether a manipulation of conditions occurs in randomized, within-subjects designs rather than between-subjects (or within-subject, blocked) designs. The fact that simple laws do not hold reveals the complex, interactive nature of memory phenomena. Nonetheless, the science of memory is robust, with most findings easily replicated under the same conditions as originally used, but when other variables are manipulated, effects may disappear or reverse. These same points are probably true of psychological research in most, if not all, domains.
120年来，认知心理学家一直在探寻学习和记忆的一般规律。在这篇综述中，我得出的结论是，没有一条规律经得起时间的考验。没有任何一条实证规律能够经受住对詹金斯（1979年）确定为对记忆实验至关重要的四组因素的操控：实验对象的类型、要记忆的事件种类、编码条件的操控以及测试条件的变化。影响许多现象的另一个因素是，条件的操控是在随机的、被试内设计中进行，还是在被试间（或被试内、分块）设计中进行。简单规律不成立这一事实揭示了记忆现象的复杂、交互性质。尽管如此，记忆科学依然稳健，大多数研究结果在与最初使用的相同条件下很容易被复制，但当其他变量被操控时，效果可能会消失或反转。这些观点可能在大多数（如果不是全部）心理学研究领域都是成立的。
