Biographical Memoirs Volume 61 (1992) / Chapter Skim
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Arthur Weever Melton
Arthur Weever Melton
Pages 314-329
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From page 315... ...
Tt was only the second year of his return to academia after having served as technical director of the Air Force effort in human personnel for eight years. Of course, as is typical of graduate students, ~ assumed he had always been at Michigan, although T remember now references to his time at Ohio State.
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From page 316... ...
TncleecI, the work of Herbert Simon and Allen Newell, among others, has been very influential in cleveloping cognitive science. The Michigan Human Performance Center, together with the Applied Psychology Unit in Cambriclge, Massachusetts, representec3 a different tradition that also contributed to the view of the human as an information processor.
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From page 317... ...
to McGeoch's textbook Psychology of Human Learning. It was largely a compenclium of experimental findings of functional relationships between variables that coulct be manipulated by the experimenter and the changes in performance that they caused.
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From page 318... ...
However, Robinson hacI been involvect since 1925 in a project supported by the Carnegie Corporation and the American Association of Museums, en c! Melton was employocl for three years in studies leacling to important monographs on the actual behavior of visitors to museums anct a comparison of methods of instructing children · ~ in science museums.
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From page 319... ...
In addition, these studies illustrated that systematic observation of natural behavior could be applied to the actual implementation of museum exhibits. P RE-WAR RE S EARC H In 1932 MeTton's former mentor John McGeoch left the chairmanship of the Psychology Department at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
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From page 320... ...
approach in studies of human learning was to explore functional relationships between variables ant! not to postulate hidclen processes.
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From page 321... ...
Although the very label factor X indicates the care with which Melton took to identify the theoretical nature of this hiciclen factor, it is clear that he was using the careful functional approach to make visible a process that was otherw~se hidden from view. The use of subtraction methods to reveal underlying process was to become a major part of new studies of short-term memory ancI cognition that emerged after WorIct War TI, but Melton's own research was a clear forerunner of the newer process orientation.
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From page 322... ...
This topic allowed Melton to combine his long-stancling interest in verbal learning with the newer information processing approach that emphasized memory within the context of cognitive tasks. Melton's
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From page 323... ...
that "the structural memory trace established by a single occurrence of an event must be extraordinarily persistent." The evidence for continuity between short- and long-term memory providecl by that paper was influential and remains wiclely cited as a source of information on the basic characteristics of short-term memory. Another finding made by Melton (1967)
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From page 324... ...
This finding was at first widely doubted, but it was then replicated innumerable times and later was a major contributor to the development of multilevel parallel processing models of cooperative computation that have been so widely influential in recent years. Robert Crowder's very convincing demonstration that nonverbal interpolated mental effort reduces short-term memory for verbal items was a basic contribution to capacity models of short-term memory.
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From page 325... ...
Honors were also numerous, inclucling election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1969 and receipt of the GoIc! Medal Award of the American Psychological Association in 1976.
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From page 326... ...
Daniel, Frank Gelciard, James Greeno, and Wilert McKeachie (American fournal of Psychology 95~19801:153-581. Another biography appeared in conjunction with his reception of the GoicI Mecial Award of the American Psychological Association (American Psychologast 32~1977]
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From page 327... ...
The influence of degree of interpolated learning on retroactive inhibition and the overt transfer of specific responses.
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From page 328... ...
2:1-21. 1964 Categories of Human Learning.
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