The role of taxonomies in the study of human memory

Abstract

The idea that memory is not unitary but is instead composed of multiple systems has a long history and has been debated with particular vigor in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, whether or not there are multiple memory systems remains unsettled. In this article, we suggest that psychologists wishing to classify memory can learn from biological systematics, the discipline that creates taxonomies of species. In so doing, we suggest that psychologists have made two assumptions in classifying memory: that features of memory are perfectly correlated, and that there is a straightforward mapping between taxonomy and theory. We argue that these assumptions are likely to be incorrect, but we also argue that there is a place for taxonomy in the study of memory. Taxonomies of memory are organizational schemes for data - they are descriptive, not explanatory - and so can inspire theory, although they cannot serve as theories themselves.