Bookshelf

Memory domains

By and large, popular books about memory concentrate on memory strategies rather than the structure of the underlying memory domains, although this information is of course crucial to the success of those strategies. Unfortunately, books that explore specific memory domains are almost invariably academic. With this understanding, here are some books which look at these aspects of memory.

Gruneberg, Michael & Morris, Peter (eds.) Aspects of memory. Vol.1: The practical aspects. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1992. [Review]

This book contains chapters on face memory, event memory and planning memory.

Face memory

Unusually, this book about face perception was written for the popular (i.e. non-academic) market. It was written to accompany an exhibition held at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1995:

Bruce, Vicki & Young, Andy: In the eye of the beholder. The science of face perception. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Event memory

Written by an academic in the field of memory, this book is nevertheless an engaging read, written in an anecdotal style:

Engle, Susan: Context is everything: The nature of memory. W.H. Freeman & Co, 1999.[Review]

Far more academic, this book is a collection of papers from various academics. Many of the papers were presented at a conference on cognition in 1985:

Neisser, Ulric & Winograd, Eugene (eds.) Remembering reconsidered: Ecological and traditional approaches to the study of memory. Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Planning memory

Skill memory

Most books about how we learn and remember skills are turgidly academic. However, some perspective may be gained from what might be termed a case study. The following book chronicles a research project that studied Rajan Mahadevan, a man with an extraordinary skill for memorizing and recalling digits. The project ran for three years and included four control subjects. There is some brief discussion of other memorists:

Thompson, Charles P., Cowan, Thaddeus M. & Frieman, Jerome: Memory search by a memorist. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993.