The #AS50 digital event concluded last week. The posts for this event coincided with the publication of a special issue of Memory & Cognition that celebrated the impact on cognitive science of a paper published by Richard C. Atkinson and Richard M. Shiffrin in 1967.

The paper, given the hashtag #AS50 for our event, reported the results of several years of research, and was entitled Human Memory: A Proposed System and its Control Processes. The paper has been cited more than 10,000 times and has clearly had a major impact on the field.

The digital event consists of the following posts:

• Stephan Lewandowsky provides some historical context for the paper.
• Ken Malmberg and Rich Shiffrin, the guest editors of the special issue, review the principal contributions of the Atkinson and Shiffrin paper.
• David Kellen provides an in-depth look into some aspects of Atkinson and Shiffrin that are still remarkably current.
• Candice Morey differentiates between different approaches to memory and concludes that we should not settle for being approximately right.
• Lisa Fazio focuses on the control processes of memory and when taking control does (and does not) improve memory.
• Diane Pecher draws a connection between laboratory research and computational models and problems with memory in everyday life.

The special issue of Memory & Cognition was guest edited by Kenneth J. Malmberg, Jeroen G.W. Raaijmakers, and Richard M. Shiffrin. All of the 19 articles are currently open access and accessible through this landing page.

Here is the table of contents with direct links to the articles:

• 50 years of research sparked by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) by Kenneth J. Malmberg, Jeroen G. W. Raaijmakers, Richard M. Shiffrin
• From short-term store to multicomponent working memory: The role of the modal model by Alan D. Baddeley, Graham J. Hitch, Richard J. Allen
• Central tendency representation and exemplar matching in visual short-term memory by Chad Dubé
• Dissociating visuo-spatial and verbal working memory: It’s all in the features by Marie Poirier, James M. Yearsley, Jean Saint-Aubin, Claudette Fortin…
• Interpolated retrieval effects on list isolation: Individual differences in working memory capacity by Christopher N. Wahlheim, Timothy R. Alexander, Michael J. Kane
• The effects of Hebb repetition learning and temporal grouping in immediate serial recall of spatial location by Momoe Sukegawa, Yoshiyuki Ueda, Satoru Saito
• Control processes in short-term storage: Retrieval strategies in immediate recall depend upon the number of words to be recalled by Geoff Ward, Lydia Tan
• Task effects determine whether recognition memory is mediated discretely or continuously by Ryan M. McAdoo, Kylie N. Key, Scott D. Gronlund
• Learning how to exploit sources of information by Brad Wyble, Michael Hess, Ryan E. O’Donnell, Hui Chen, Baruch Eitam
• Monitoring the ebb and flow of attention: Does controlling the onset of stimuli during encoding enhance memory? by Trisha N. Patel, Mark Steyvers, Aaron S. Benjamin
• The role of control processes in temporal and semantic contiguity by M. Karl Healey, Mitchell G. Uitvlugt
• Auditory distraction does more than disrupt rehearsal processes in children’s serial recall by Angela M. AuBuchon, Corey I. McGill, Emily M. Elliott
• The effect of working memory maintenance on long-term memory by Joshua K. Hartshorne, Tal Makovski
• List-strength effects in older adults in recognition and free recall by Lili Sahakyan
• Verbal and spatial acquisition as a function of distributed practice and code-specific interference by Adam P. Young, Alice F. Healy, Matt Jones, Lyle E. Bourne Jr.
• Item repetition and retrieval processes in cued recall: Analysis of recall-latency distributions by Yoonhee Jang, Heungchul Lee
• Testing the primary and convergent retrieval model of recall: Recall practice produces faster recall success but also faster recall failure by William J. Hopper, David E. Huber
• A strength-based mirror effect persists even when criterion shifts are unlikely by Gregory J. Koop, Amy H. Criss, Angelina M. Pardini
• Familiarity, recollection, and receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves in recognition memory by James F. Juola, Alexandra Caballero-Sanz, Adrián R. Muñoz-García…