Attentive Learning of Sequential Handwriting Movements: A Neural Network Model

Defense Advanced research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-92-J-1309); National Science Foundation (IRI-97-20333); National Institutes of Health (I-R29-DC02952-01)

Initial Free Recall Data Characterized and Explained By Activation Theory of Short Term Memory

The initial recall distribution in a free recall experiment is shown to be predictably different from the overall free recall distribution including an offset which can cause the least remembered items to be almost completely absent from the first recall. Using the overall free recall distribution as input and a single parameter describing the probability of simultaneous reactivated items per number of items in the presented list, activation theory not only qualitatively but quantitatively describes the initial recall distributions of data by Murdock (1962) and Kahana et al (2002). That the initial free recall can be simply explained in terms of the overall recall suggests that theories of memory based on interference or other context sensitive information are false since knowledge of the future would have to be incorporated to predict the initial recall

The Role of Consciousness in Memory

Conscious events interact with memory systems in learning, rehearsal and retrieval (Ebbinghaus 1885/1964; Tulving 1985). Here we present hypotheses that arise from the IDA computional model (Franklin, Kelemen and McCauley 1998; Franklin 2001b) of global workspace theory (Baars 1988, 2002). Our primary tool for this exploration is a flexible cognitive cycle employed by the IDA computational model and hypothesized to be a basic element of human cognitive processing. Since cognitive cycles are hypothesized to occur five to ten times a second and include interaction between conscious contents and several of the memory systems, they provide the means for an exceptionally fine-grained analysis of various cognitive tasks. We apply this tool to the small effect size of subliminal learning compared to supraliminal learning, to process dissociation, to implicit learning, to recognition vs. recall, and to the availability heuristic in recall. The IDA model elucidates the role of consciousness in the updating of perceptual memory, transient episodic memory, and procedural memory. In most cases, memory is hypothesized to interact with conscious events for its normal functioning. The methodology of the paper is unusual in that the hypotheses and explanations presented are derived from an empirically based, but broad and qualitative computational model of human cognition