Man, Machine and Memory

In the 1950s, mathematician and Bletchley Park code breaker Alan Turing envisaged a sophisticated computer whose mechanical generation of responses would be indistinguishable from that of a human.

In this programme Martin Sixsmith looks at the way this metaphor of human cognition has informed research into memory and perception.

He considers the work of the 1930s Cambridge psychologist Frederic Bartlett and the American memory specialist George Miller. He talks to Alan Baddeley who with Graham Hitch developed a new theory of working memory, and to Peter Thompson of the University of York about the way our brains perceive and process information - sometimes failing to spot the most obvious.

Producer: Sara Parker
A Falling Tree Production for BBC Radio 4.