BA Reed, PhD Stan., FASSA

Consulting Editor, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning
and Memory, 1976-80. 1987-1989; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2002-


Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
Former Member of the National Committee for Psychology of the Australian Academy of Science
Former Member Australian Research Council Large Grants Panel

In a project supported by an NH&MRC Development grant and the Telstra Broadband fund I am creating a computerized memory test for the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. The test has several novel features including the use of voice recognition technology and the ability to generate an unlimited number of alternative forms.
In a current ARC grant several collaborators and I are working on memories for words/concepts when they are embedded in an extended associative network. This work has allowed us to refute two widely held theories about human memory. This work has already been applied to memories for companies/brands sponsoring events and it is likely that there will be important implications for education and for disordered thought processes, such as those in Schizophrenia.
I have also been looking at memory errors (“false memories”). This work has provided support for the Dennis and Humphreys (2001) theory. It may also provide a foundation, which could lead to an enhanced understanding of false memories for real world events, such as memories for sexual abuse.
I am also working on the control processes in memory access. Here I am trying to undersand the role of context, the difficulties involved in maintaining or reinstating context and the different kind of memory retreival operations.

Representative and Recent Publications

Humphreys, M.S. (1978). Item and relational information: a case for context independent retrieval. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17, 179-187.
Revelle, W., Humphreys, M.S., Simon, L., & Gilliland, K. (1980). The interactive effect of personality, time of day, and caffeine: A test of the arousal model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 109, 1-31.
Humphreys, M.S., & Revelle, W. (1984). Personality, motivation and performance: A theory of the relationship between individual differences and information processing. Psychological Review, 91, 153-184.
*Humphreys, M.S., Bain, J.D., & Pike, R. (1989). Different ways to cue a coherent memory system: A theory for episodic, semantic and procedural tasks. Psychological Review, 96, 208-233.
*Humphreys, M.S., Pike, R., Bain, J.D., & Tehan, G. (1989). Global matching: A comparison of the SAM, Minerva II, Matrix and TODAM models. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 33, 36-67.
*Chappell, M. & Humphreys, M. S. (1994). An auto-associative neural network for sparse representations: Analysis and application to models of recognition and cued recall. Psychological Review, 101, 103-128.
*Humphreys, M. S., Wiles, J., & Dennis, S. (1994). Toward a theory of human memory: Data structures and access processes: Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17, 655-667.
*Dennis, S. & Humphreys, M. S. (2001). A Context Noise Model of Episodic Recognition Memory. Psychological Review. 108, 452-478.
Humphreys, M. S., Dennis, S., Maguire, A., M., Kelley, R.; Boland, S. W., & Hughes, J. D.(2003). What You Get Out of Memory Depends on the Question You Ask. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 797–812
Tehan, G., Humphreys, M. S., Tolan, G. A., & Pitcher, C. (2004). The Role of Context in Producing Item Interactions and False Memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 107-119.
Loft, S., Humphreys, M., & Neal, A. (2004). The influence of memory for prior instances on performance in a conflict detection task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 10, 173-187.
de Zubicaray, G. I., McMahon, K. L., Eastburn, M. M., Finnigan, S., Humphreys, M. S. (2005). FMRI evidence for word frequency and strength effects during episodic memory encoding. Cognitive Brain Research, 22, 439-450.
Smith, A. E., & Humphreys, M..S. (2006) Evaluation of Unsupervised semantic mapping of natural language with Leximancer concept mapping. Behavior Research Methods, 38, 262-279.
Cornwell, T. B., Humphreys, M. S., Maguire, A. M., Weeks, C. S., Tellegen, C. (in press 28/10/05). Sponsorship-Linked Marketing: The Role of Articulation in Memory, Journal of Consumer Research