Differing Views of Individual Differences

Only gradually over time has it has dawned on me that most cognitive psychologists, including myself, view individual differences in how people learn and remember in a markedly different way that do many laypersons and even, perhaps, other types of psychologists. At the risk of oversimplification, I think that cognitive psychologists typically view individual differences as akin to differences in parameter values. We assume that individuals differ in multiple and significant ways—such as working-memory capacity, prior relevant knowledge, speed of rehearsal or retrieval, visual/spatial versus verbal/ propositional skills and preferences, and so forth—but we do not assume that individuals differ in the basic functional architecture of learning and memory. That is, we assume that the same basic architecture governs how everybody—in the absence of serious organic or psychogenic disorders—stores new information, remembers or forgets that information over time, and accesses or fails to access that information when it is needed. It was in the context of testifying as an expert witness that it first became clear t