YEAR

MILESTONES

CITATIONS IN JOURNALS

1962

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: ORGANIZATION OF RECALL

Introduced the concept of "subjective organization" and its objective measurement, and demonstrated how it is correlated with (and hypothetically a determinant of) the increased memory performance over trials in free-recall learning.

Tulving, E. Psychological Review, 69, 344‑354. 1962.

Cited over 600 times

1964

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: FREE-RECALL LEARNING

Conceptually analyzed free-recall learning into two separate, objectively identifiable components, “intratrial retention” and “intertrial retention,” and experimentally demonstrated that a strong association exists between subjective organization and intertrial retention but not between subjective organization and intratrial retention.  Also suggested that the function of subjective organization is to enhance the “accessibility” of stored information.

Tulving, E. Psychological Review, 71, 219‑237.  1964.

Cited over 100 times

1966

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

Conceptually distinguished between information that is “available” in memory and information that is “accessible.” Also introduced the concept of “retrieval cues” and experimentally demonstrated the powerful role that retrieval cues play in determining whether available memory information is accessible to retrieval.

Tulving, E., & Pearlstone, Z. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 5, 381-391. 1966.

Cited over 700 times

1968

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: EFFECTIVENESS OF RETRIEVAL CUES

Raised the question of what determines effectiveness of retrieval cues and experimentally demonstrated that a retrieval cue facilitates recall “if and only if” the cue’s relation to the to-be-recalled item is stored at the same time as the to-be-remembered item.  This idea heralded what later came to be called the “encoding specificity principle.”

Tulving, E., & Osler, S. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 77, 593-601. 1968.

Cited over 200 times

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: RECALL OF EVENTS

In a historical and conceptual review and analysis suggested that free recall of words, a widely used memory task at the time, can be thought of as recall of experienced events rather than as time-tagged lexical units in a person’s knowledge store, a popular view at the time. This shift in orientation from “items” to “events” in the study of memory paved the way to the concept of episodic memory.

Tulving, E. In T.R. Dixon and D.L. Horton (Eds.), Verbal Behavior and General Behavior Theory (pp. 2-36). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. 1968.

1971

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: INTERFERENCE

Experimentally demonstrated the phenomenon of “cue-dependent forgetting”, that is, that forgetting attributable to proactive and retroactive interference may reflect nothing more than difficulty of retrieval (difficult access to) stored information that is available in the memory store.

Tulving, E., & Psotka, J. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 87, 1-8. 1971.

Cited over 200 times

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: RETRIEVAL PROCESSES IN RECOGNITION

Reported findings of an experiment that showed that retrieval processes comparable to those in recall are also present in recognition tests of learned material. The prevalent view at the time was that retrieval of (or access to) stored (available) information in recognition tests is “automatic” and does not involve any retrieval processes.

Tulving, E., & Thomson, D.M. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 87, 116-124. 1971.

Cited over 300 times

1972

MEMORY SYSTEMS: EPISODIC AND SEMANTIC MEMORY

On theoretical grounds proposed a distinction between episodic and semantic memory as “two parallel and partially overlapping information processing systems.”  Episodic memory had to do with “personal experiences and their temporal relations”, whereas semantic memory was conceptualized as a system for dealing with “information about meaning of words, concepts, and classification of concepts”.

Tulving, E. In E. Tulving and W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of Memory. New York: Academic Press. pp. 381-403. 1972.

Cited over 1500 times

1973

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: ENCODING SPECIFICITY

With Donald Thomson, extending the ideas introduced earlier (Tulving & Osler, 1968), proposed the “encoding specificity principle” according to which the effectiveness of a retrieval cue depends not only on its pre-existing (“semantic-memory”) association with the (“episodic-memory”) to-be-remembered event, but also on the rememberer’s mental activity at the time when the event originally occurred.  This principle, among other things, was seen as providing an explanation for the striking phenomenon that it is possible for people to recall the event of a word’s earlier occurrence but not recognize the same word as previously studied, a phenomenon that was impossible by common sense as well as by then prevailing theory.  This phenomenon of “recognition failure of recallable words” was also described for the first time in the same article.

Tulving, E., & Thomson, D.M. Psychological Review. 80, 352-373. 1973.

Cited over 1500 times

1975

Assisting his colleague Fergus Craik, presented the results of a systematic series of 10 experiments on “levels of processing,” all of which demonstrated the powerful effect of encoding operations on recall and recognition of verbal material in a situation in which all other then known determinants of memory performance were held constant.

Craik, F.I.M., & Tulving, E. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 268‑294.  1975.

Cited over 1500 times

1982

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS: EPISODIC MEMORY AND PRIMING

Inspired by interesting observations made about amnesic patients by Elizabeth Warrington and Larry Weiskrantz, experimentally demonstrated two forms of a striking dissociation in performance of two memory tasks — priming in word-fragment completion and episodic recognition of words — in healthy subjects, leading to the suggestion that priming may be supported by a long-term memory system other than episodic and semantic.

Tulving, E., Schacter, D.L., & Stark, H.A. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 8, 336‑342. 1982.

Cited over 500 times

1983

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS: EPISODIC MEMORY

In his now classic book, argued for the distinction between episodic and semantic memory as functionally separate albeit closely interacting systems.  Systematically outlined the similarities and differences between episodic and semantic memory; identified episodic memory with mental “recollective experience”; and outlined a conceptual framework (GAPS) for its future study. 

Tulving, E. Elements of Episodic Memory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1983.

Cited over 1900 times

1984

to

1985

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS: THEORY

Presented pre-theoretical reasons for abandoning the then current belief of unitary memory, the idea that “memory is memory,” and hypothesized the existence of multiple memory systems.  Described a ternary classification scheme consisting of procedural, semantic, and episodic memory, and discussed the nature and logic of evidence for multiple systems, together with illustrative data.

Tulving, E. (1984). Multiple learning and memory systems. In K. M. J. Lagerspetz & P. Niemi (Eds.), Psychology in the 1990's. (pp. 163-184). North-Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.

Tulving, E. American Psychologist. 40, 385-398.  1985.

Cited over 500 times

1985

Based on clinical observations of a single case of amnesia, N.N. (later known as K.C.), proposed a distinction between “autonoetic” and “noetic” forms of consciousness, characterizing episodic and semantic memories, respectively.  Autonoetic consciousness was proposed to make possible mental time travel, encompassing both the personal past and the personal future. Also described a simple method for objectively capturing these two forms of consciousness in healthy human subjects.  This method is now known as “remember/know.”

Tulving, E. Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology. 26:1-12. 1985.

Cited over 900 times

1988

to

1989

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS: BRAIN IMAGING

In collaboration with Jarl Risberg and David Ingvar of Lund University in Sweden, conducted an early preliminary study of regional cerebral blood flow comparing episodic and semantic memory, and found that episodic recollection (autonoetic consciousness) is accompanied by a relatively greater degree of activation of the anterior (frontal and temporal) cortical regions whereas retrieval of semantic knowledge (noetic consciousness) is accompanied by a relatively greater degree of activation of the posterior (parietal and occipital) regions.

Tulving, E., Risberg, J., & Ingvar, D.H. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 26, 522. 1988.

Tulving, E. American Scientist, 77, 361‑367.  1989.

Tulving, E. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 1, 3‑26.  1989.

Together the three publications are cited over 100 times

1990

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS: PRIMING

With Daniel Schacter, extending an earlier idea (Tulving, Schacter, & Stark, 1982), provided a theoretical analysis of perceptual priming, a “nonconscious” form of human memory, and suggested that it is subserved by the perceptual representation system (PRS) that operates at pre-semantic and pre-episodic levels, emerges early in development, and lacks the kind of flexibility of access to stored information that is characteristic of semantic and episodic memory.

Tulving, E., & Schacter, D.L. Science, 247, 301-306.  1990.

Cited over 1000 times

1991

to

1993

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: SEMANTIC LEARNING IN AMNESIA

In two extensive experiments with the individual K.C. who has no functional episodic memory, but is otherwise intellectually intact, found that, contrary to the then accepted beliefs, it is possible for densely amnesic individuals to learn new semantic information. This finding suggested that episodic memory (“remembering”) is not necessary for learning new facts (“knowing”). The efficacy of such learning depends drastically on the conditions under which the learning occurs, thereby rendering questionable the then standard claims about what constitutes amnesia.

Tulving, E., Hayman, C.A.G., & MacDonald, C.A. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 17, 595-617. 1991.

Hayman, C.A.G., MacDonald, C.A., & Tulving, E. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 5, 375-389. 1993.

Together these two papers are cited over 200 times

1994

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS: THE HERA MODEL

On the basis of positron emission tomography (PET) studies conducted at Toronto and elsewhere, proposed the “Hemispheric Encoding/Retrieval Asymmetry (HERA) model”.  According to this model, the left prefrontal cortex is more involved than the right prefrontal cortex in episodic memory encoding, whereas the right prefrontal cortex is more involved than the left prefrontal cortex in episodic memory retrieval.

Tulving, E., et al. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. 91, 2016-20. 1994.

Cited over 700 times

1995

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS: THE “SPI” MODEL

Proposed the “Serial, Parallel and Independent (SPI) model” to describe the nature of the relations among perceptual, semantic, and episodic memory systems.  According to this model, encoding of information into memory is serial, storage is parallel (same information can be held in more than a single system), and retrieval is independent (retrieval from one system need not depend on the “contents” of another).

Tulving, E. Organization of memory – Quo vadis? The Cognitive Neurosciences. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. pp. 839-847. 1995.

Cited over 100 times

1996

BASIC MEMORY PROCESSES: NOVELTY ENCODING

On the basis of a positron emission tomography (PET) study proposed a “novelty/encoding” hypothesis: novelty assessment represents an early stage of long-term memory encoding and such encoding occurs to the extent that incoming information is novel (that is, redundant information is not encoded).

Tulving, E., et al. Cerebral Cortex, 6, 71-79. 1996.

Cited over 200 times

1997

MEMORY SYSTEMS: EPISODIC MEMORY AND THE FRONTAL LOBES

With colleagues, Mark Wheeler and Donald Stuss, reviewed evidence from brain imaging studies, neuropsychological experiments, clinical observations, and developmental psychology to support the general  idea that prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in empowering people with autonoetic consciousness and the capacity  to “mentally represent and become aware of subjective experiences in the past, present, and future”.

Wheeler, M., Stuss, D.T., & Tulving, E. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 331-354.  1997.

Cited over 400 times

2002

MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS: EPISODIC MEMORY

In an up-to-date retrospective summary reviewed the progress that had been made in neuropsychological and functional brain imaging studies of episodic memory, and suggested that “episodic memory is a true, even if as yet generally unappreciated, marvel of nature”.

Tulving, E. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 1-25.  2002.

Cited over 300 times