Putting Short-Term Memory Into Context: Reply to Usher, Davelaar, Haarmann, and Goshen-Gottstein (2008)

The temporal context model posits that search through episodic memory is driven by associations between the multiattribute representations of items and context. Context, in turn, is a recency weighted sum of previous experiences or memories. Because recently processed items are most similar to the current representation of context, M. Usher, E. J. Davelaar, H. J. Haarmann, and Y. Goshen-Gottstein (2008) have suggested that the temporal context model (TCM-A) embodies a distinction between short-term and long-term memory and that this distinction is central to TCM-A's success in accounting for the pattern of recency and contiguity observed across short and long timescales. The authors dispute Usher et al's claim that context in TCM-A has much in common with classic interpretations of short-term memory. The idea that multiple representations interact in the process of memory encoding and retrieval (across timescales), as proposed in TCM-A, is very different from the classic dual-process view that distinct rules govern retrieval of recent and remote memories.