Memory researchers have discussed the relationship between consciousness and memory frequently in the last few decades. Beginning with research by Warrington and Weiskrantz (1968; 1970), memory has been shown to influence task performance even without awareness of retrieval. Data from amnesic patients show that a study episode influences task performance despite their lack of conscious memory for the study session. More recently, issues of intentionality, awareness, and the relationship between conscious and unconscious forms of memory (...) have come to the forefront. Conscious memory has sometimes been defined by intention to retrieve and sometimes by awareness of retrieval. This distinction has been debated as measurement methodologies have developed. In addition, the functional relationship between conscious and automatic forms of memory has implications for measurement of memory processes and the development of models of memory task performance. Several measurement techniques for conscious and automatic memory are reviewed. The current state of these issues is also discussed. (shrink)

(2009). How automatic is “automatic vigilance”? The role of working memory in attentional interference of negative information. Cognition & Emotion: Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 1106-1117.

Four experiments were conducted to evaluate explanations of picture superiority effects previously found for several tasks. In a process dissociation procedure with word stem completion, picture fragment completion, and category production tasks, conscious and automatic memory processes were compared for studied pictures and words with an independent retrieval model and a generate-source model. The predictions of a transfer appropriate processing account of picture superiority were tested and validated in “process pure” latent measures of conscious and unconscious, or (...) class='Hi'>automatic and source, memory processes. Results from both model fits verified that pictures had a conceptual processing advantage over words for all tasks. The effects of perceptual compatibility depended on task type, with pictorial tasks favoring pictures and linguistic tasks favoring words. Results show support for an explanation of the picture superiority effect that involves an interaction of encoding and retrieval processes. (shrink)

To analyze the role of automatic processes in the fulfilment of delayed intentions, we extended a typical prospective memory setting with a context signal to indicate whether the intended action is to be carried out or not. Building on dual-process models of cognition, we hypothesized that automatic and controlled processes are in opposition when the action is to be suppressed, because automatic processes trigger the associated response whereas controlled processes exert inhibition. Experiment 1 demonstrates the occurrence (...) of false prospective memory responses to cues with the “suppress” signal. Experiment 2 shows that the rate of false prospective memory responses is sensitive to a manipulation that strengthens the role of automatic processes in prospective memory. The findings support the use of false prospective memory responses for the study of automatic processes in the execution of delayed intentions. (shrink)

I address the commentators' calls for clarification of theoretical terms, discussion of similarities to other proposals, and extension of the ideas. In doing so, I keep the focus on the purpose of memory: enabling the organism to make sense of its environment so that it can take action appropriate to constraints resulting from the physical, personal, social, and cultural situations.

This paper provides an overview of developments in a dual processing theory of automatic and controlled processing that began with the empirical and theoretical work described by Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) and Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) over a quarter century ago. A review of relevant empirical findings suggests that there is a set of core behavioral phenomena reflecting differences between controlled and automatic processing that must be addressed by a successful theory. These phenomena relate to: consistency in training, (...) serial versus parallel processing, level of effort, robustness to stressors, degree of control, effects on long‐term memory, and priority encoding. We detail a computational model of controlled processing, CAP2, that accounts for these phenomena as emergent properties of an underlying hybrid computational architecture. The model employs a large network of distributed data modules that can categorize, buffer, associate, and prioritize information. Each module is a connectionist network with input and output layers, and each module communicates with a central Control System by outputting priority and activity report signals, and by receiving control signals. The Control System is composed of five processors including a Goal Processor, an Attention Controller, an Activity Monitor, an Episodic Store, and a Gating & Report Relay. The transition from controlled to automatic processing occurs in this model as the data modules become capable of transmitting their output without mediation by the Control System. We describe recent progress in mapping the components of this model onto specific neuroanatomical substrates, briefly discuss the potential for applying functional neuroimaging techniques to test the model's predictions, and its relation to other models. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn keeping with the dominant view that skills are largely automatic, the standard view of memory systems distinguishes between a representational declarative system associated with cognitive processes and a performance-based procedural system. The procedural system is thought to be largely responsible for the performance of well-learned skilled actions. Here we argue that most skills do not fully automate, which entails that the declarative system should make a substantial contribution to skilled performance. To support this view, we review evidence (...) showing that the declarative system does indeed play a number of roles in skilled action. (shrink)

As a theory of skill acquisition, the instance theory of automatization posits that, after a period of training, algorithm‐based performance is replaced by retrieval‐based performance. This theory has been tested using alphabet‐arithmetic verification tasks (e.g., is A + 4 = E?), in which the equations are necessarily solved by counting at the beginning of practice but can be solved by memory retrieval after practice. A way to infer individuals’ strategies in this task was supposedly provided by the opportunistic‐stopping phenomenon, (...) according to which, if individuals use counting, they can take the opportunity to stop counting when a false equation associated with a letter preceding the true answer has to be verified (e.g., A + 4 = D). In this case, such within‐count equations would be rejected faster than false equations associated with letters following the true answers (e.g., A + 4 = F, i.e., outside‐of‐count equations). Conversely, the absence of opportunistic stopping would be the sign of retrieval. However, through a training experiment involving 19 adults, we show that opportunistic stopping is not a phenomenon that can be observed in the context of an alphabet‐arithmetic verification task. Moreover, we provide an explanation of how and why it was wrongly inferred in the past. These results and conclusions have important implications for learning theories because they demonstrate that a shift from counting to retrieval over training cannot be deduced from verification time differences between outside and within‐count equations in an alphabet‐arithmetic task. (shrink)

Checking the equivalence of two Boolean functions, or combinational circuits modeled as Boolean functions, is often desired when reliable and correct hardware components are required. The most common approaches to equivalence checking are based on simulation and model checking, which are constrained due to the popular memory and state explosion problems. Furthermore, such tools are often not user-friendly, thereby making it tedious to check the equivalence of large formulas or circuits. An alternative is to use mathematical tools, called interactive (...) theorem provers, to prove the equivalence of two circuits; however, this requires human effort and expertise to write multiple output functions and carry out interactive proof of their equivalence. In this paper, we define two simple, one formal and the other informal, gate-level hardware description languages, design and develop a formal automatic combinational circuit equivalence checker tool, and test and evaluate our tool. The tool CoCEC is based on human-assisted theorem prover Coq, yet it checks the equivalence of circuit descriptions purely automatically through a human-friendly user interface. It either returns a machine-readable proof of circuits’ equivalence or a counterexample of their inequality. The interface enables users to enter or load two circuit descriptions written in an easy and natural style. It automatically proves, in few seconds, the equivalence of circuits with as many as 45 variables. CoCEC has a mathematical foundation, and it is reliable, quick, and easy to use. The tool is intended to be used by digital logic circuit designers, logicians, students, and faculty during the digital logic design course. (shrink)

Attention is strongly influenced by both external stimuli and internal goals. However, this useful dichotomy does not readily capture the ubiquitous and often automatic contribution of past experience stored in memory. We review recent evidence about how multiple memory systems control attention, consider how such interactions are manifested in the brain, and highlight how this framework for ‘memory-guided attention’ might help systematize previous findings and guide future research.

Based on brain state-dependent behavioral changes, consolidation of sensorimotor memories has been posited to evolve in two different functional stages. Only the second of these stages requires sleep and leads to performance benefits. Recent results, however, suggest that sleep is not always crucial for the expression of delayed behavioral gains but might be critical for enhancing automaticity in the absence of attention, another expression of memory consolidation.

Clark and Chalmers claim that an external resource satisfying the following criteria counts as a memory: the agent has constant access to the resource; the information in the resource is directly available; retrieved information is automatically endorsed; information is stored as a consequence of past endorsement. Research on forgetting and metamemory shows that most of these criteria are not satisfied by biological memory, so they are inadequate. More psychologically realistic criteria generate a similar classification of standard putative external (...) memories, but the criteria still do not capture the function of memory. An adequate account of memory function, compatible with its evolution and its roles in prospection and imagination, suggests that external memory performs a function not performed by biological memory systems. External memory is thus not memory. This has implications for: extended mind theorizing, ecological validity of memory research, the causal theory of memory. (shrink)

The temporal structure for motivating, monitoring, and making sense of agency depends on encoding, maintaining, and accessing the right contents at the right times. These functions are facilitated by memory. Moreover, in informing action, memory is itself often active. That remembering is essential to and an expression of agency and is often active suggests that it is a type of action. Despite this, Galen Strawson (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103, 227–257, 2003) and Alfred Mele (2009) deny that (...) remembering is an action. They claim that memory fails to admit of control. Remembering is automatic—once remembering starts, the process can neither be stopped nor intervened on. Moreover, the agent does not initiate remembering. An agent has control over an event or process if and only if she has the capacity and opportunity to initiate and intervene on that event or process. Actions are events over which an agent has control. Since it is automatic, we fail to have control over remembering. Thus, remembering is not an action. In this paper, I draw out an assumption of Strawson’s and Mele’s accounts: an event-type whose tokens exhibit automaticity cannot, for that reason, be an action (§2). Against this assumption, I draw parallels between skilled bodily action and memory. I show that memory exhibits two defining features of skill: it can be learned with practice and it admits of attributions of excellence (§3). These features reveal how intelligent control is exerted in the exercise of skill despite apparent automaticity—control is gained over time (§4). Since exercises of skill are by definition actions and since memory exemplifies the defining features of skill, memory is a skill and instances of remembering are actions too. (shrink)

Semantic priming has been a focus of research in the cognitive sciences for more than 30 years and is commonly used as a tool for investigating other aspects of perception and cognition, such as word recognition, language comprehension, and knowledge representations. Semantic Priming: Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition examines empirical and theoretical advancements in the understanding of semantic priming, providing a succinct, in-depth review of this important phenomenon, framed in terms of models of memory and models of (...) word recognition. The first section examines models of semantic priming, including spreading activation models, the verification model, compound-cue models, distributed network models, and multistage activation models (e.g. interactive-activation model). The second section examines issues and findings that have played an especially important role in testing models of priming and includes chapters on the following topics: methodological issues (e.g. counterbalancing of materials, choice of priming baselines); automatic vs. strategic priming; associative vs. "pure" semantic priming; mediated priming; long-term semantic priming; backward priming; unconscious priming; the prime-task effect; list context effects; effects of word frequency, stimulus quality, and stimulus repetition; and the cognitive neuroscience of semantic priming. The book closes with a summary and a discussion of promising new research directions. The volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and students in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. (shrink)

The current conceptualization of working memory highlights its pivotal role in the cognitive control of goal-directed behaviour, for example, by keeping task-priorities and relevant information ‘online’. Evidence has accumulated, however, that working memory contents can automatically misdirect attention and observers can only exert little intentional control to overcome irrelevant contents held in memory that are known to be misleading for behaviour. The authors discuss extant evidence on this topic and argue that obligatory functional coupling between working (...) class='Hi'>memory and attentional selection reflects a default property of the brain which is hardwired in overlapping substrates for memory and perception. They further argue that the neuroanatomical substrates for working memory biases in vision are distinct from the classical fronto-parietal networks involved in attentional control and distinct from the mechanisms that mediate attention biases from long-term memory. Finally the authors present emerging evidence that working memory ‘guiding’ processes may operate outside conscious awareness. (shrink)

Horton and Gerrig outlined a memory-based processing model of conversational common ground that provided a description of how speakers could both strategically and automatically gain access to information about others through domain-general memory processes acting over ordinary memory traces. In this article, we revisit this account, reviewing empirical findings that address aspects of this memory-based model. In doing so, we also take the opportunity to clarify what we believe this approach implies about the cognitive psychology of (...) common ground, and just as important, what it does not imply. We also highlight related areas of research demonstrating how general cognitive processes can constrain access to relevant knowledge in ways that shape both language production and comprehension. (shrink)

This paper surveys the impact on neuropsychology of Wittgenstein's elucidations of memory. Wittgenstein discredited the storage and imprint models of memory, dissolved the conceptual link between memory and mental images or representations and, upholding the context-sensitivity of memory, made room for a family resemblance concept of memory, where remembering can also amount to doing or saying something. While neuropsychology is still generally under the spell of archival and physiological notions of memory, Wittgenstein's reconceptions can (...) be seen at work in its leading-edge practitioners. However, neuroscientists, generally, are finding memory difficult to demarcate from other cognitive and noncognitive processes, and I suggest this is largely due to their considering automatic responses as part of memory, termed nondeclarative or implicit memory. Taking my lead from Wittgenstein's On Certainty, I argue that there is only remembering where there is also some kind of mnemonic effort or attention, and, therefore, that so-called implicit memory is not memory at all, but a basic, noncognitive certainty. (shrink)

The ability to integrate information from diverse texts and to detect logical implications of the integrated information is fundamental to the understanding process. This paper shows that identifying and configuring relevant facts in order to support hypothesized inferences is extremely difficult unless the facts have been committed to memory. Simply reading relevant texts for familiarization and then referring to them as needed provides an inadequate basis for deductive logic. Further, apprehension of the logical configuration of fads underlying a particular (...) inference can be an essentially automatic process for the reasoner who has structured the facts appropriately in memory. A model of search and memory mechanisms is proposed. It accounts for accuracy and reaction time data, as well as individual differences in inference evaluation. The implications of the superiority of memorization over familiarization‐plus‐referencing as a basis for learning and reasoning are discussed. (shrink)

Previous studies on the effects of emotional context on memory for centrally presented neutral items have obtained inconsistent results. And in most of those studies subjects were asked to either make a connection between the item and the context at study or retrieve both the item and the context. When no response for the contexts is required, how emotional contexts influence memory for neutral items is still unclear. Thus, the present study attempted to investigate the influences of four (...) types of emotional picture contexts on recognition memory of neutral words using both behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measurements. During study, words were superimposed centrally onto emotional contexts, and subjects were asked to just remember the words. During test, both studied and new words were presented without the emotional contexts and subjects had to make “old/new” judgments for those words. The results revealed that, compared with the neutral context, the negative contexts and positive high-arousing context impaired recognition of words. ERP results at encoding demonstrated that, compared with items presented in the neutral context, items in the positive and negative high-arousing contexts elicited more positive ERPs, which probably reflects an automatic process of attention capturing of high-arousing context as well as a conscious and effortful process of overcoming the interference of high-arousing context. During retrieval, significant FN400 old/new effects occurred in conditions of the negative low-arousing, positive, and neutral contexts but not in the negative high-arousing condition. Significant LPC old/new effects occurred in all conditions of context. However, the LPC old/new effect in the negative high-arousing condition was smaller than that in the positive high-arousing and low-arousing conditions. These results suggest that emotional context might influence both the familiarity and recollection processes. (shrink)

There is considerable interest in the use of neuroimaging techniques for forensic purposes. Memory detection techniques, including the well-publicized Brain Fingerprinting technique (Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, Inc., Seattle WA), exploit the fact that the brain responds differently to sensory stimuli to which it has been exposed before. When a stimulus is specifically associated with a crime, the resulting brain activity should differentiate between someone who was present at the crime and someone who was not. This article reviews the scientific literature (...) on three such techniques: priming, old/new, and P300 effects. The forensic potential of these techniques is evaluated based on four criteria: specificity, automaticity, encoding flexibility, and longevity. This article concludes that none of the techniques are devoid of forensic potential, although much research is yet to be done. Ethical issues, including rights to privacy and against self-incrimination, are discussed. A discussion of legal issues concludes that current memory detection techniques do not yet meet United States standards of legal admissibility. (shrink)

Systematic errors In performance are an important aspect of human behavior that have not received adequate explanation. One such systematic error is termed postcompletion error; a typical example is leaving one's card In the automatic teller after withdrawing cash. This type of error seems to occur when people have an extra step to perform in a procedure after the main goal has been satisfied. The fact that people frequently make this type of error, but do not make this error (...) every time, may best be explained by considering the working memory load at the time the step is to be performed: The error is made when the load on working memory is high, but will not be made when the load is low. A model of performance In the task was constructed using Just and Carpenter's (1992) CAPS that predicted that high working memory load should be associated with postcompletion errors. Two experiments confirmed that such errors can be produced in a laboratory as well as a naturalistic setting, and that the conditions under which the CAPS model makes the error are consistent with the conditions under which the errors occur in the laboratory. (shrink)

We describe an experiment that investigated levels-of-processing effects in recognition memory for famous faces. The degree of conscious control over the recognition decisions was manipulated by using a response deadline procedure, and memory awareness associated with those decisions was assessed using a standard remember-know paradigm. Levels-of-processing effects were found at both short and long response deadlines, and at both deadlines those effects occurred only in remembering. Moreover, knowing, as well as remembering, increased with the greater opportunity for conscious (...) control over recognition decisions at the long deadline. These results have implications for dual-process theories that distinguish between a slower, more controlled recollection process, reflected in remembering, and a faster, more automatic familiarity process, reflected in knowing. (shrink)

Toddlers exhibit poor transfer between video and real-world contexts. Contingently responsive video such as that found in touchscreen apps appears to assist transfer for some toddlers but not others. This study investigated the extent to which toddlers' working memory moderates the impact of contingency on toddler's transfer of learning from video. Toddlers watched a hiding event on either contingent video that advanced only after touch input or non-contingent video that proceeded automatically. Toddlers then searched for a corresponding object on (...) a felt board. Additionally, toddlers' working memory was assessed. Findings indicate WM and age moderated the impact of contingency on transfer: Contingency decreased transfer in younger children while increasing transfer among older children. However, this was only true for children with relatively low WM. Contingency had little impact on transfer among children with relatively high WM, regardless of age. Results from this study suggest that WM is one specific moderator that predicts whether toddlers are likely to learn from contingent vs. non-contingent video, yet WM does not operate in isolation. Together, these findings underscore the importance of considering multiple child characteristics when identifying the optimal conditions for toddlers' learning from symbolic media. (shrink)

There is an emerging consensus that human behavior is governed by two types of processes: System 1 processes, which are quicker, automatic, and run in parallel, and System 2 (S2) processes, which are slower, more conscious, and run in serial. Among such “dual-process” theorists, however, there is disagreement about whether the premises we use in our conscious, S2 reasoning should be considered as beliefs. In this exchange, one facet that has been largely overlooked is how conscious beliefs are structurally (...) and functionally similar to episodic memories. This article will argue that the similarities between beliefs and episodic memories, specifically in light of Daniel Schacter’s widely influential constructive memory framework, highlight a heretofore unexamined empirical weakness of dispositional accounts of S2 beliefs. In addition, this perspective helps situate beliefs within our broader understanding of how information is encoded and retrieved in the brain. (shrink)

So far, little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with emotion effects on prospective memory (PM) performance. Thus, this study aimed at disentangling possible mechanisms for the effects of emotional valence of PM cues on the distinct phases composing PM by investigating event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were engaged in an ongoing N-back task while being required to perform a PM task. The emotional valence of both the ongoing pictures and the PM cues was manipulated (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant). ERPs (...) were recorded during the PM phases, such as encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of the intention. A recognition task including PM cues and ongoing stimuli was also performed at the end of the sessions. ERP results suggest that emotional PM cues not only trigger an automatic, bottom-up, capture of attention, but also boost a greater allocation of top-down processes. These processes seem to be recruited to hold attention towards the emotional stimuli and to retrieve the intention from memory, likely because of the motivational significance of the emotional stimuli. Moreover, pleasant PM cues seemed to modulate especially the prospective component, as revealed by changes in the amplitude of the ERP correlates of strategic monitoring as a function of the relevance of the valence for the PM task. Unpleasant pictures seemed to modulate especially the retrospective component, as revealed by the largest old/new effect being elicited by unpleasant PM pictures in the recognition task. (shrink)

Minimal counterintuitiveness and its automatic processing has been suggested as the explanation of persistence and transmission of cultural ideas. This purported automatic processing remains relatively unexplored. We manipulated encoding strategy to assess the persistence of memory for different types of expectation violation. Participants viewed concepts including two types of expectation violation or no violation under three different encoding conditions: in the shallow condition participants focused on the perceptual attributes of the concepts, a deep condition probed their semantic (...) meaning, and intentional remembering condition. Participants’ recall was tested immediately as well as 2 weeks later. Our findings showed the greatest memory enhancement for schema-level violations regardless of the encoding condition, while the memory for domain-level violations improved over time. These results suggest two distinct memory patterns for different types of violations, and illustrate the importance of elaborative processes in memory consolidation especially for violations to our expectations. (shrink)

Corresponding to Glenberg's distinction between the automatic and effortful modes of memory, I propose a distinction between cued and detached mental representations. A cued representation stands for something that is present in the external situation of the representing organism, while a detached representation stands for objects or events that are not present in the current situation. This distinction is important for understanding the role of memory in different cognitive functions like planning and pretense.

The consideration of deliberate versus automatic processing of numeric representations is important to math education, memory for numbers, and decision-making. In this commentary, we address the possible roles for numeric representations in such higher-level cognitive processes. Current evidence is consistent with important roles for both automatic and deliberative processing of the representations.

Although we encounter objects from a particular perspective, what we perceive and remember are typically whole objects. In ‘amodal completion’ our mind automatically fills in objects’ spatially occluded parts, and our memory then often discards information about the orientation from which the objects were perceived. An analogous phenomenon of ‘event completion’ has been demonstrated, which may be understood as the mind automatically filling in temporally occluded parts of events. Exemplifying typical experiments in this paradigm, Strickland and Keil (Strickland and (...) Keil, Cognition 121:409–415, 2011) showed participants videos depicting a causal event (e.g., someone kicking a ball), which was edited so that a crucial part was missing (e.g., the moment of contact between foot and ball). Subjects were more likely to falsely remember having seen the moment of contact if (and only if) it was strongly implied by subsequent footage. We use this phenomenon of event completion as a test case for comparing different theories of reference in memory. We argue that event completion puts pressure on both pure causal and pure descriptive theories of reference, and favors more nuanced hybrids of causal and descriptive theories, which integrate insights from cognitive and epistemic approaches. (shrink)

The role of encoding/retrieval conditions compatibility was investigated in a reality-monitoring task. An experiment was conducted which showed a positive effect of reinstating distinctive encoding operations at test. That is, generation of a low-frequency word from the same word fragment at study and test significantly enhanced item recognition memory. However, reinstating of relatively more automatic operations of reading or generating a highfrequency word did not influence recognition performance. Moreover, LF words were better recognized than HF words, but (...) class='Hi'>memory for source did not depend on the encoding/retrieval match or on the word-frequency. In comparison with reading, generating an item at study significantly enhanced source memory but generating it at test had no effect. The data were analysed using a multinomial modelling approach which allowed ruling out the influence of a response bias on the measurement of memory ability. (shrink)

Localist models of spreading activation (SA) and models assuming distributed representations offer very different takes on semantic priming, a widely investigated paradigm in word recognition and semantic memory research. In this study, we implemented SA in an attractor neural network model with distributed representations and created a unified framework for the two approaches. Our models assume a synaptic depression mechanism leading to autonomous transitions between encoded memory patterns (latching dynamics), which account for the major characteristics of automatic (...) semantic priming in humans. Using computer simulations, we demonstrated how findings that challenged attractor‐based networks in the past, such as mediated and asymmetric priming, are a natural consequence of our present model’s dynamics. Puzzling results regarding backward priming were also given a straightforward explanation. In addition, the current model addresses some of the differences between semantic and associative relatedness and explains how these differences interact with stimulus onset asynchrony in priming experiments. (shrink)

The human body is not a given fact; it is not, as Descartes believed, a machine made up of flesh and bones. The body is acquired, achieved, and learned. It is thus full of mimetic and mnemonic implications. The body remembers, and it does so in collectively relevant ways. Gestures, corporeal and phonetic rhythms, affective idioms, and emotional styles perceptual, sensorial, motoric, and affective schemata are all largely learned in shared social contexts. These aspects of the embodied experience are often (...) consigned to habit, to bodily automatisms, and to corporeal memories that reflect aspects of culture. But if the body reflects certain aspects of culture that press to become naturalized and organically attached to social actors, it also resists these kinds of cultural pressures. These adaptive and resistive dynamics, as this book shows, are not without consequences for individuals and groups. These processes can result in both advantages and disadvantages for social actors. They can take us toward certain futures while foreclosing others. It is therefore necessary to understand how, why, and to what extent corporeal memories are constructed but also resisted, modified, or created anew. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) interactive alignment model explains the existence of alignment between speakers via an automatic priming mechanism. We propose that it may be preferable to explain alignment through processes of memory retrieval. Our discussion highlights how memory retrieval can produce the same results as the priming mechanism and presents data that favor the memory-based view.

As a first step in involving user emotion in human‐computer interaction, a memory‐based expert system (JANUS; Kearney, 1991) was designed to interpret facial expression in terms of the signaled emotion. Anticipating that a VDU‐mounted camera will eventually supply face parameters automatically, JANUS now accepts manually made measurements on a digitized full‐face photograph and returns emotion labels used by college students. An intermediate representation in terms of face actions (e.g., mouth open) is also used. Production rules convert the geometry into (...) these. A dynamic memory (Kolodner, 1984; Schank, 1982) interprets the face actions in terms of emotion labels. The memory is dynamic in the sense that new emotion labels can be learned with experience. A prototype system has been implemented on a Sun 2/120 system using POPLOG. Validation studies on the prototype suggest that the interpretations achieved are generally consistent with those of college students without formal instruction in emotion signals. (shrink)

What does it take for a subject to experience a personal memory as being her own? According to Fernández’ (2019) model of endorsement, this particular phenomenal quality of our memories, their “sense of mineness”, can be explained in terms of the experience of the mnemonic content as veridical. In this article, I criticize this model for two reasons: (a) the evidence that is used by Fernández to ground his theoretical proposal is dubious; and more importantly, (b) the endorsement model (...) does not accommodate many non-pathological everyday memories that preserve their sense of mineness, but whose veridicality is explicitly denied, suspected, not automatically endorsed, or neither denied nor endorsed. Finally, I sketch two alternative explanations: one also problematic, the other one more promising, and present some normative advantages of the latter. This also displays the undesirability of the endorsement model from a normative perspective. (shrink)

People often remember what they attend to in the world. Such memory can be cast as a kind of mental catalog or index of attended objects. To investigate how such an index is acquired and used, protocol data were collected from a programmer who scrolled to off‐screen objects from time to time as she worked. These protocol data were modeled using Soar, which constrains how the index is constructed. In the model, an index entry is an episodic trace encoded (...) during attention. The trace associates the attention event with a time symbol denoting the event's occurrence. Later, the model can ask itself whether it saw that object by calling to mind an image of the attention event. If this image retrieves a time symbol, then the model infers that the object exists and can reason about bringing the object back into view. Episodic indexing is a theory of these encoding and retrieval processes. It posits that information about attention events is encoded automatically, but that retrieval requires effort and knowledge. Episodic indexing is congruent with a range of results on episodic and temporal codes and recognition and recall processes. It incorporates source monitoring (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) and is a simple and pervasive form of long‐term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). (shrink)