Current Directions in Psychological Science

From Association to Organization

Abstract

Recent as well as historical critiques of association theory, which is based on automatic linking mechanisms, lead to a consideration of an alternative: organization theory. The latter theory postulates that human memory is organized, instead, in a nested, hierarchical fashion that structures storage and retrieval. Organization theory also postulates that there is a limit of four expandable units in organized memory and that the same limit is found in recall and production units.