Speed and Consolidation: Warren Meck’s Early Ideas about Temporal Reference Memory and some Later Developments

Abstract

Abstract This article is initially focussed on Warren Meck’s early work on temporal reference memory, in particular the idea that some drug manipulations affect ‘memory storage speed’. Meck’s original notion had links to an earlier literature, not usually related to timing, the study of memory consolidation. We present some examples of the use of the idea of memory storage speed from Meck’s early work, and show how it was abandoned in favour of a ‘memory constant’, K*, not related to storage speed per se. Some arguments against the idea of memory storage speed are presented, as well as discussion of a small amount of research on consolidation of memories for time. Later work on temporal reference memory, including rapid acquisition and interference effects, is also discussed.