LEARNING-FORGETTING RATE INDEPENDENCE DEFINED BY FORGETTING FUNCTION PARAMETERS OR FORGETTING FUNCTION FORM - REPLY TO LOFTUS AND BAMBER AND TO WIXTED

This article is a reply to the comments of Loftus and Bamber and Wixted on a recent article of mine. Various errors and misunderstandings of my approach in those comments are corrected and clarified. It is argued that the question of whether or not forgetting rate depends on the amount of initial learning is best answered by first providing a theoretical definition of forgetting, specifying a forgetting function, defining a rate of forgetting in terms of that function, and then determining whether the initial level of learning appears as a parameter influencing the value of the rate of forgetting. This view opposes that of Loftus and Bamber, who define the learning-forgetting rate issue in terms of the form of the forgetting function itself, and maintain that forgetting rate is independent of rate of learning only if the retention function is a monotone transformation of an exponential function.