Cognitive Architecture With Episodic Memory

The authors chose a provocative title for this book. In this provocation, there is an incentive for those who would like to understand what consciousness is. Their goal was to explain the phenomenon, which is perhaps even harder to understand than the emergence of life from inanimate matter. Through this work, they developed and described a reductive model of conscious mind named motivated emotional mind. Although the basis for episodic memory are real events that were observed by the agent, memorized episodes can also be generated in the agent's mind. The working memory supports explanation of the meaning of the whole scene by combining the meanings of its constituent elements and their relations. The observed scenes are stored in the episodic memory. An agent can build its value system to assess the significance of observed events and later use it to influence its behavior and its emotional states. Only the conscious being has the ability to remember episodes from its experiences. The conscious system must be able to imagine a hypothetical situation and plan its activities. Because episodic memories require the structures of the hippocampus or its equivalent, if the body has a hippocampus, it is potentially conscious. Working memory is responsible for temporarily storing information that has been perceived in the environment or retrieved from long-term memory. It is important for reasoning, decision-making, and behavioral control. It records stimuli processed in the deeper layers of the brain. In addition, working memory combines temporary storage and manipulates selected information to support cognitive functions. Embodied intelligence architecture discussed in this chapter is aimed at building an intelligent and conscious machines and its ability to learn is recognized as the most important feature of intelligence. Authors show that embodied minds contain certain memory structures, and it is through them that machines can be conscious. The organization of brain structures and their functions constitute a functional, reductive model of the conscious mind, called motivated emotional mind. Different functional blocks of this architecture process information simultaneously, sending interrupt signals to direct attention, change plans, monitor activities, and respond to external threats and opportunities. They also provide a conscious agent with personal memories, accumulated knowledge, skills, and desires, making the agent act fully autonomously. What is needed to build embodied, conscious machines? First of all, their sensing must be based on the observations and predictions of results of their own actions in the real world. This requires the development of sensorimotor coordination integrated with the machine value system. The second requirement is the development of learning methods and control of the robot's movements. This includes the development of motoric functions, activators, grippers, methods of movement, and navigation. The chapter ends with predictions for future development of conscious robots and elaboration on the life and death cycles for conscious minds.

Author(s):  
Slava Kalyuga

One of the major components of our cognitive architecture, working memory, becomes overloaded if more than a few chunks of information are processed simultaneously. For example, we all experience this cognitive overload when trying to keep in memory an unfamiliar telephone number or add two four-digit numbers in the absence of a pen and paper. Similar in nature processing limitations of working memory represent a major factor influencing the effectiveness of human learning and performance, particularly in complex environments that require concurrent performance of multiple tasks. The learner prior domain-specific knowledge structures and associated levels of expertise are considered as means of reducing these limitations and guiding high-level knowledge-based cognitive activities. One of the most important results of studies in human cognition is that the available knowledge is a single most significant learner cognitive characteristic that influences learning and cognitive performance. Understanding the key role of long-term memory knowledge base in our cognition is important to the successful management of cognitive load in multimedia learning.


PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e5969
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Ellmore ◽  
Bridget Mackin ◽  
Kenneth Ng

Repetitive saccades benefit memory when executed before retrieval, with greatest effects for episodic memory in consistent-handers. Questions remain including how saccades affect scene memory, an important visual component of episodic memory. The present study tested how repetitive saccades affect working and recognition memory for novel scenes. Handedness direction (left–right) and degree (strong/consistent vs. mixed/inconsistent) was measured by raw and absolute laterality quotients respectively from an 8-question handedness inventory completed by 111 adults. Each then performed either 30 s of repetitive horizontal saccades or fixation before or after tasks of scene working memory and scene recognition. Regression with criterion variables of overall percent correct accuracy and d-prime sensitivity showed that when saccades were made before working memory, there was better overall accuracy as a function of increased direction but not degree of handedness. Subjects who made saccades before working memory also performed worse during subsequent recognition memory, while subjects who fixated or made saccades after the working memory task performed better. Saccades made before recognition resulted in recognition accuracy that was better (Cohen’s d = 0.3729), but not significantly different from fixation before recognition. The results demonstrate saccades and handedness interact to affect scene memory with larger effects on encoding than recognition. Saccades before scene encoding in working memory are detrimental to short- and long-term memory, especially for those who are not consistently right-handed, while saccade execution before scene recognition does not appear to benefit recognition accuracy. The findings are discussed with respect to theories of interhemispheric interaction and control of visuospatial attention.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina V. Guarnieri ◽  
Marcus Vinicius Alves ◽  
Ana Maria Lemos Nogueira ◽  
Ivanda de Souza Silva Tudesco ◽  
José Carlos F. Galduróz ◽  
...  

AbstractThe dopaminergic system is implicated in several cognitive processes including memory, attention and executive functions. This study was a double-blind, placebo-randomized trial designed to investigate the effect of dopamine D2 receptor blockade on episodic and working memory and particularly the relationship between executive functions, working memory capacity and long-term memory (LTM). Subjects ingested a single oral dose (4 mg) of haloperidol, a dopamine D2 receptor antagonist or placebo. Multiple linear regression using generalized linear models and a generalized estimating equation were used for statistical analyses. The results demonstrated that haloperidol impaired episodic memory (free recall of words and prose recall), working memory capacity-WMC (operation span task-OSPAN) and highly demanding executive functions (random number generation - RNG). In addition, it demonstrated that despite the large impairment in the RNG task performance in the haloperidol group, it did not affect episodic memory. The OSPAN task is predictive of episodic memory impairment, suggesting that memory impairments produced by haloperidol could be due in part to the impairment of WMC. As WMC partly relies on the appropriate functioning of the medial temporal lobe, probably the haloperidol-induced impairment on episodic memory through the decrease in the performance of WMC may depend on the activation of this area of the brain. The present study is relevant because it provides data on dopaminergic modulation of memory systems; suggesting that the major cause of deficits in episodic memory may be due to hippocampal function and WMC impairments, the latter more specifically with regard to controlled search and binding.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Ellmore ◽  
Bridget Mackin ◽  
Kenneth Ng

AbstractRepetitive saccades benefit memory when executed before retrieval, with greatest effects for episodic memory in consistent-handers. Questions remain including how saccades affect scene memory, an important visual component of episodic memory. The present study tested how repetitive saccades affect working and recognition memory for novel scenes. Handedness direction (left-right) and degree (strong/consistent vs. mixed/inconsistent) was measured by raw and absolute laterality quotients respectively from an 8-question handedness inventory completed by 111 adults. Each then performed either 30 seconds of repetitive horizontal saccades or fixation before or after tasks of scene working memory and scene recognition. Regression with criterion variables of overall percent correct accuracy and d-prime sensitivity showed that when saccades were made before working memory, there was better overall accuracy as a function of increased direction but not degree of handedness. Subjects who made saccades before working memory also performed worse during subsequent recognition memory, while subjects who fixated or made saccades after the working memory task performed better. Saccades made before recognition resulted in recognition accuracy that was better (Cohen’s d=0.3729), but not significantly different from fixation before recognition. The results demonstrate saccades and handedness interact to affect scene memory with larger effects on encoding than recognition. Saccades before scene encoding in working memory are detrimental to short- and long-term memory, especially for those who are not consistently right-handed, while saccade execution before scene recognition does not appear to benefit recognition accuracy. The findings are discussed with respect to theories of interhemispheric interaction and control of visuospatial attention.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary C. Potter

AbstractRapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of words or pictured scenes provides evidence for a large-capacity conceptual short-term memory (CSTM) that momentarily provides rich associated material from long-term memory, permitting rapid chunking (Potter 1993; 2009; 2012). In perception of scenes as well as language comprehension, we make use of knowledge that briefly exceeds the supposed limits of working memory.


Author(s):  
Angela A. Manginelli ◽  
Franziska Geringswald ◽  
Stefan Pollmann

When distractor configurations are repeated over time, visual search becomes more efficient, even if participants are unaware of the repetition. This contextual cueing is a form of incidental, implicit learning. One might therefore expect that contextual cueing does not (or only minimally) rely on working memory resources. This, however, is debated in the literature. We investigated contextual cueing under either a visuospatial or a nonspatial (color) visual working memory load. We found that contextual cueing was disrupted by the concurrent visuospatial, but not by the color working memory load. A control experiment ruled out that unspecific attentional factors of the dual-task situation disrupted contextual cueing. Visuospatial working memory may be needed to match current display items with long-term memory traces of previously learned displays.


Author(s):  
Ian Neath ◽  
Jean Saint-Aubin ◽  
Tamra J. Bireta ◽  
Andrew J. Gabel ◽  
Chelsea G. Hudson ◽  
...  

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan S. Rose ◽  
Joel Myerson ◽  
Henry L. Roediger ◽  
Sandra Hale

Emotion ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 1446-1461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Guo ◽  
Wenmin Li ◽  
Xiqian Lu ◽  
Xiaodong Xu ◽  
Fangfang Qiu ◽  
...  

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