Retrieved Context Models of Episodic Memory

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This research seeks to illuminate the mechanisms underlying human episodic memory through both computational modeling and experimental studies. Episodic memory is the ability to link the information that we experience with its temporal and situational context. The ability to do so places us within our memories, making them autobiographical. Failures of episodic memory are a hallmark of normal aging and neurodegenerative disease. The first aim of the empirical studies is to assess the influence of prior knowledge and memories of past events on people's ability to encode and retrieve newly learned information. A second aim is to examine how repetition influences memory at a mechanistic level and to explain why repetitions are most beneficial for memories that are widely distributed in time. In addressing both aims, the investigators will use and assess the context maintenance and retrieval model, using neural network models of how temporal context is represented in memory, how it evolves through experience, and how it interacts with semantic context and source context in the formation and retrieval of associative information. Advancing the understanding of human learning and memory has implications for the diagnosis and eventual treatment of disease-related memory impairments such as Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. The work may also impact instructional technology and educational theory and practice.