Remembering and Researching the Old and the New: An Interview with Roddy Roediger

Abstract

Dr. Henry L. (Roddy) Roediger is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in the Psychology Department at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) and a scholar of human memory. He graduated from Washington & Lee University in 1969 and received his PhD in psychology from Yale University. He served as chair of the Psychology Department at WUSTL from 1996 to 2004, when he was named dean of academic planning in Arts and Sciences. Roediger's research interests include such topics as how people can suffer memory illusions and false memories (remembering events differently from the way they happened or remembering events that never happened at all); implicit memory (when past events affect ongoing behavior without one's awareness); and, most recently, applying cognitive psychology to improving learning in educational situations. One primary current interest is why the process of retrieval serves as a powerful memory enhancer. David G. Elmes is professor emeritus of psychology at Washington & Lee University, where he taught for 40 years. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Virginia. Elmes was a research associate at the Human Performance Center of the University of Michigan, and he was a Visiting Fellow of University College at the University of Oxford. He has coauthored or edited four books that focus on research methods and has numerous publications on learning, memory, and olfaction. Elmes served as president of the Council on Undergraduate Research. He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Virginia Academy of Science.