Recall and recognition of dreams and waking events: A diary paradigm

Summary: Dream recall is often considered to be poor, although it is rarely systematically compared to the retrieval of waking event memories. A diary paradigm was implemented to explore the memory profile of recalled dreams over time, in comparison to recalled waking experiences. Twenty-five participants completed a dream and waking-event diary over two weeks. Titles of reports were re-presented in a surprise recall task. Subsequently, extracts of the reports were represented for recognition. No significant differences were found between dream and waking event memories in terms of either recall or recognition although some differences were found in terms of recollective experience, with waking-events being "remembered"as episodic memories more than dreams. Diary dream memories that are recalled, reported and to some extent rehearsed are therefore accessible and detailed in a similar manner to waking experiences, providing that they are adequately encoded close to their time of occurrence. The continuity of retrieval processes over sleep and wake is outlined

Towards Learning ‘Self’ and Emotional Knowledge in Social and Cultural Human-Agent Interactions

Original article can be found at: http://www.igi-global.com/articles/details.asp?ID=35052 Copyright IGI. Posted by permission of the publisher.This article presents research towards the development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) inhabited by intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and modeling a scenario of inter-cultural interactions. The ultimate aim of this VLE is to allow users to reflect upon and learn about intercultural communication and collaboration. Rather than predefining the interactions among the virtual agents and scripting the possible interactions afforded by this environment, we pursue a bottomup approach whereby inter-cultural communication emerges from interactions with and among autonomous agents and the user(s). The intelligent virtual agents that are inhabiting this environment are expected to be able to broaden their knowledge about the world and other agents, which may be of different cultural backgrounds, through interactions. This work is part of a collaborative effort within a European research project called eCIRCUS. Specifically, this article focuses on our continuing research concerned with emotional knowledge learning in autobiographic social agents.Peer reviewe

Scraping Down the Past: Memory and Amnesia in W. G. Sebald\u27s Anti-narrative

Vanguard anti-narrativist Galen Strawson declares personal memory unimportant for self-constitution. But what if lapses of personal memory are sustained by a morally reprehensible amnesia about historical events, as happens in the work of German author W. G. Sebald? The importance of memory cannot be downplayed in such cases. Nevertheless, contrary to expectations, a concern for memory needn’t ally one with the narrativist view of the self. Recovery of historical and personal memory results in self-dissolution and not self-unity or understanding in Sebald’s characters. In the end, Sebald shows how memory can be significant, even imperative, within a deeply anti-narrativist outlook on the self, memory, and history

Towards Avatars with Artificial Minds: Role of Semantic Memory

he first step towards creating avatars with human-like artificial minds is to give them human-like memory structures with an access to general knowledge about the world. This type of knowledge is stored in semantic memory. Although many approaches to modeling of semantic memories have been proposed they are not very useful in real life applications because they lack knowledge comparable to the common sense that humans have, and they cannot be implemented in a computationally efficient way. The most drastic simplification of semantic memory leading to the simplest knowledge representation that is sufficient for many applications is based on the Concept Description Vectors (CDVs) that store, for each concept, an information whether a given property is applicable to this concept or not. Unfortunately even such simple information about real objects or concepts is not available. Experiments with automatic creation of concept description vectors from various sources, including ontologies, dictionaries, encyclopedias and unstructured text sources are described. Haptek-based talking head that has an access to this memory has been created as an example of a humanized interface (HIT) that can interact with web pages and exchange information in a natural way. A few examples of applications of an avatar with semantic memory are given, including the twenty questions game and automatic creation of word puzzles

Memory, Imagery, and Self-Knowledge

One distinct interest in self-knowledge concerns whether one can know about one’s own mental states and processes, how much, and by what methods. One broad distinction is between accounts that centrally claim that we look inward for self-knowledge (introspective methods) and those that claim that we look outward for self-knowledge (transparency methods). It is here argued that neither method is sufficient, and that we see this as soon as we move beyond questions about knowledge of one’s beliefs, focusing instead on how one distinguishes, for oneself, one’s veridical visual memories from mere (non-veridical) visual images. Given robust psychological and phenomenal similarities between episodic memories and mere imagery, the following is a genuine question that one might pose to oneself: “Do I actually remember that happening, or am I just imagining it?” After critical analysis of the transparency method (advocated by Byrne 2010, following Evans 1982) to this latter epistemological question, a brief sketch is offered of a more holistic and inferential method for acquisition of broader self-knowledge (broadly following the interpretive-sensory access account of Carruthers 2011). In a slogan, knowing more of the mind requires using more of the mind

Protecting eyewitness evidence: Examining the efficacy of a self-administered interview tool

Given the crucial role of eyewitness evidence, statements should be obtained as soon as possible after an incident. This is not always achieved due to demands on police resources. Two studies trace the development of a new tool, the Self-Administered Interview (SAI), designed to elicit a comprehensive initial statement. In Study 1, SAI participants reported more correct details than participants who provided a free recall account, and performed at the same level as participants given a Cognitive Interview. In Study 2, participants viewed a simulated crime and half recorded their statement using the SAI. After a delay of 1 week, all participants completed a free recall test. SAI participants recalled more correct details in the delayed recall task than control participants

Exploring Memory Cues to Aid Information Retrieval from Personal LifeLog Archives

The expansion of personal information archives and the emerging field of Personal Lifelogs (PLs) are creating new challenges for information retrieval (IR). While studies have demonstrated the difficulties of IR for these massive data collection [1], we should also think about how we can opportunities and benefits from integrating these data sources as a component of “digital memories” , considering their rich connections with the users‟ memory. We observed that most existing approaches to personal archive IR are mostly technology-driven. Although in recent years studies in Personal Information management (PIM) have claimed to make use of the human memory features, and many works have been reported as investigating well-remembered features of computer files (documents, email, photos). Yet, these explorations are usually confined to the attributes or feature that current computer file systems or technology have provided. I believe that there are important and potentially useful data attributes that these studies have ignored. In addition, current personal search interfaces provide searching options based on what is available in the system, e.g. require users to fill in the calendar date, regardless of the fact that people actually don‟t often encode „time‟ in such a way. My PhD project aims to explore what users actually tend to recall in different personal achieve information seeking tasks, how to present searching options to cater for the right type or format of information that users can recall, and how to exploit this information in an IR system for personal lifelog archives. In this paper, I discuss the limits and advantages of some related work, and present my current and proposed study, with an outlook of an interface that I plan to develop to explore my proposals