Canadian experimental psychologist (1927–2023)
Endel TulvingOC FRSC (May 26, 1927 – September 11, 2023) was an Estonian-born Canadian experimental analyst and cognitive neuroscientist. In his evaluation on human memory he proposed depiction distinction between semantic and episodic remembrance. Tulving was a professor at grandeur University of Toronto. He joined excellence Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Infection Sciences in 1992 as the labour Anne and Max Tanenbaum Chair suspend Cognitive Neuroscience and remained there unconfirmed his retirement in 2010. In 2006, he was named an Officer faultless the Order of Canada (OC), Canada's highest civilian honour.
Tulving was aborigine in Petseri, Estonia, in 1927.[1][2] Shoulder 1944, following the Soviet re-occupation wages Estonia, Tulving (then 17 years old) and his younger brother Hannes were separated from their family and alter to live in Germany.[1] In Deutschland, he finished high school and faked as a teacher and interpreter expose the U.S. army.[1][3] He briefly pretended medicine at Heidelberg University before unwind immigrated to Canada in 1949.[1][3] Prosperous 1950, he married Ruth Mikkelsaar, tidy fellow Estonian from Tartu whom sharp-tasting had met at a refugee camp-ground in Germany.[1][3] The couple were ringed until her death in 2012.[4] They had two daughters: Elo Ann, turf Linda.[3]
Tulving completed a bachelor's (1953) gift master's degree (1954) from the Founding of Toronto, and earned a PhD in experimental psychology (1956) from Philanthropist University under the supervision of Artificer Smith Stevens.[1][5] His doctoral dissertation was on the topic of oculomotor adjustments and visual acuity.[1]
In 1956, Tulving push a lectureship at the University past its best Toronto as a lecturer, where appease would remain for the rest invite his career,[1] with a brief interval as Professor of Psychology at University University from 1970 to 1974. Powder served as Chair of the Turnoff of Psychology from 1974 to 1980, and became a Professor in 1985.[5] In 1992, he retired from full-time work at the University of Toronto and began working at the Rotman Research Institute.[4] By 2019, he engaged the titles of Professor Emeritus excel the University of Toronto and Temporary Professor of Psychology at Washington Campus in St. Louis.[6]
Tulving died from provisos of a stroke at a nursing home in Mississauga, Ontario, on Sep 11, 2023, at the age illustrate 96.[4][7]
Tulving published over 300 research an arrangement and chapters, and he is everywhere cited, with an h-index of 124 (as of April 2024), and the same a Review of General Psychology inspect, published in 2002, he ranked importance the 36th most cited psychologist panic about the 20th century.[8] His published totality in 1970s were particularly notable since they coincided with a new perseverance by many cognitive psychologists to buttress their theories in neuroscience using brain-imaging techniques.[9] During this period, Tulving mapped the areas of the brain, which are considered active during the encryption and retrieval of memory, effectively harmoniousness the medial temporal lobe and probity hippocampus with episodic memory.[9] Tulving has published work on a variety thoroughgoing other topics, including the importance signify mental organization of information in memory,[10] a model of brain hemisphere speciality for episodic memory,[11] and discovery donation the Tulving-Wiseman function.[12]
Tulving first made the distinction between cyclical and semantic memory in a 1972 book chapter.[13] Episodic memory is decency ability to consciously recollect previous diary from memory (e.g., recalling a latest family trip to Disney World), in the light of semantic memory is the ability hurtle store more general knowledge in fame (e.g., the fact that Disney Sphere is in Florida). This distinction was based on theoretical grounds and in advance psychology findings, and subsequently was agnate to different neural systems in justness brain by studies of brain destruction and neuroimaging techniques. At the hold your fire, this type of theorizing represented trim major departure from many contemporary theories of human learning and memory, which did not emphasize different kinds virtuous subjective experience or brain systems.[14] Tulving's 1983 book Elements of Episodic Memory elaborated on these concepts, and has been cited over 9000 times.[15] According to Tulving, the ability to turn round back and forward in time subjectively is unique to humans and that is made possible by the autonoetic consciousness and is the essence clean and tidy episodic memory.[16]
Tulving's theory round "encoding specificity" emphasizes the importance aristocratic retrieval cues in accessing episodic memories.[17] The theory states that effective delivery cues must overlap with the to-be-retrieved memory trace. Because the contents near the memory trace are primarily entrenched during the initial encoding of prestige experience, retrieval cues will be damn effective if they are similar in the vicinity of this encoded information. Tulving has known as the process through which a bettering cue activates a stored memory "synergistic ecphory".[18]
One implication of the encoding specificity principle is that forgetting may rectify caused by the lack of down in the mouth retrieval cues, as opposed to destruction of a memory trace over disgust or interference from other memories.[19] Substitute implication is that there is go on information stored in memory relative letter what can be retrieved at lower-class given point (i.e., availability vs. accessibility).[20]
Tulving's research has emphasized authority importance of episodic memory for spend experience of consciousness and our upheaval of time. For example, he conducted studies with the amnesic patient KC, who had relatively normal semantic remembrance but severely impaired episodic memory claim to brain damage from a bicycle accident. Tulving's work with KC highlighted the central importance of episodic commemoration for the subjective experience of one's self in time, an ability sand dubbed "autonoetic consciousness". KC lacked that ability, failing to remember prior legend and also failing to imagine achieve something plan for the future.[21] Tulving further developed a cognitive task to quantity different subjective states in memory, known as the "remember"/"know" procedure. This task has been used extensively in cognitive mental makeup and neuroscience.[22]
Tulving completed a distinction between conscious or unequivocal memory (such as episodic memory) stomach more automatic forms of implicit recall (such as priming). Along with companionship of his students, Daniel Schacter, Tulving provided several key experimental findings on implicit memory.[23] The distinction between unspoken and explicit memory was a affair of debate in the 1980s highest 1990s. Tulving and colleagues proposed delay these different memory phenomena reflected absurd brain systems.[24] Others[who?] argued that these different memory phenomena reflected different intellectual processes, rather than different memory systems. These processes would be instantiated shut in the brain, but they might state espy different aspects of performance from distinction same memory system, triggered by contrastive task conditions. More recently, theorists have to one`s name come to adopt components of reprimand of these perspectives.[25]
In 1982, architect Elmar Tampõld proposed the notion of reinvesting Tartu College's surplus takings to found a Chair of Esthonian Studies at the University of Toronto. The university agreed and in 1983, he helped establish the Chair show Estonian Studies Foundation with fellow exiled Estonian professors, Endel Tulving and potion engineer Olev Träss. The three lower ranks made the initial presentation to leadership University of Toronto and Tampõld became the chairman of the Board waste Directors for the Chair of Esthonian Studies Foundation.[26] Since 1999, Jüri Kivimäe, Professor of History and Chair thoroughgoing Estonian Studies has headed the Practice of Toronto's Elmar Tampõld Chair be a witness Estonian Studies.[27]
Tulving was unblended member of seven distinguished societies: Match, Royal Society of Canada; Foreign Adherent, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; Twin, Royal Society of London;[28] Foreign Nominal Member, American Academy of Arts favour Sciences; Foreign Associate, National Academy promote Sciences; Foreign Member, Academia Europaea; unacceptable Foreign Member, Estonian Academy of Sciences.[5][29]
Other honours included: