为什么人们能回忆某些历史事件,但却无法回忆另外一些事件?例如,美国历届总统——菲尔莫尔、布坎南和麦金利,仅举数例——现在已经鲜有人记得了。Henry Roediger和K.Andrew De Soto在此证明,对文化知识的记忆是基于包括“新近性”和过去接触次数等因素的。他们的结果揭示了对文化事件的记忆是如何能被客观地加以研究的。研究人员对抽样的美国公民随着时间推移而忘却美国总统的速度进行了评估,他们聚焦于2个群体:分别 Why do people recall some historical events but can not recall other events? For example, the previous U.S. presidents Fillmore, Buchanan and McKinley, to name a few, have seldom been remembered. Here, Henry Roediger and K. Andrew De Soto demonstrate that the memory of cultural knowledge is based on such factors as the “recency” and the number of past contacts. Their results reveal how the memory of cultural events can be objectively studied. Researchers evaluated the sample of American citizens forgetting the speed of the U.S. president over time, focusing on two groups: