Because memory enters into virtually all cognition, it is impossible to design cognitive models that view memory as a self-contained cognitive faculty. Instead, memory researchers focus on specific aspects of memory. Taking this regional approach to memory, the chapters of this volume evaluate models of the short-term retention of knowledge, conceptual knowledge,autobiographical knowledge, transitory mental representations, the neurobiological basis of memory,and age-related changes in human memory. At the center of each chapter is a concern with the problem of representation—how the mind represents reality and, in the case of memory, how experience is represented, retained, and reconstructed. The authors evaluate the models against empirical findings and against current knowledge about brain function and architecture. They also address the relationship between formal and nonformal models of human memory.
| Contributors | ||
| Series preface | ||
| 1 | Introduction: models and data | 1 |
| I | Short-term memory | 11 |
| 2 | Models of verbal short-term memory | 13 |
| 3 | Formal models of memory for serial order: a review | 47 |
| II | Conceptual knowledge | 79 |
| 4 | Psychological representation of concepts | 81 |
| 5 | Representation of categories and concepts in memory | 111 |
| III | Mental models | 147 |
| 6 | Representing information in mental models | 149 |
| 7 | The retrieval of situation-specific information | 173 |
| IV | Autobiographical memory | 215 |
| 8 | Representations of autobiographical memories | 217 |
| 9 | The relationship between prospective and retrospective memory: neuropsychological evidence | 247 |
| V | Neurobiology | 273 |
| 10 | Implementing a mathematical model of hippocampal memory function | 275 |
| VI | Models of age-related changes in memory | 313 |
| 11 | Memory aging as frontal lobe dysfunction | 315 |
| 12 | Constraint satisfaction models, and their relevance to memory, aging and emotion | 341 |
| Index | 365 |
Overview
Because memory enters into virtually all cognition, it is impossible to design cognitive models that view memory as a self-contained cognitive faculty. Instead, memory researchers focus on specific aspects of memory. Taking this regional approach to memory, the chapters of this volume evaluate models of the short-term retention of knowledge, conceptual knowledge,autobiographical knowledge, transitory mental representations, the neurobiological basis of memory,and age-related changes in human memory. At the center...