Ricker Timothy J, Vergauwe Evie, Cowan Nelson
a Department of Psychological Sciences , University of Missouri , Columbia , MO , USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2016 Oct;69(10):1969-95. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2014.914546. Epub 2014 May 22.
This work takes a historical approach to discussing Brown's (1958) paper, "Some Tests of the Decay Theory of Immediate Memory". This work was and continues to be extremely influential in the field of forgetting over the short term. Its primary importance is in establishing a theoretical basis to consider a process of fundamental importance: memory decay. Brown (1958) established that time-based explanations of forgetting can account for both memory capacity and forgetting of information over short periods of time. We discuss this view both in the context of the intellectual climate at the time of the paper's publication and in the context of the modern intellectual climate. The overarching theme we observe is that decay is as controversial now as it was in the 1950s and 1960s.
这项工作采用历史研究方法来探讨布朗（1958年）的论文《即时记忆衰退理论的一些测试》。这项工作在短期遗忘领域过去具有且至今仍然极具影响力。其主要重要性在于建立了一个理论基础，用以考量一个至关重要的过程：记忆衰退。布朗（1958年）证实，基于时间的遗忘解释能够说明短期的记忆容量和信息遗忘问题。我们将在该论文发表时的学术氛围背景下以及现代学术氛围背景下讨论这一观点。我们观察到的总体主题是，衰退在如今与在20世纪50年代和60年代一样具有争议性。
