A context maintenance and retrieval model of organizational processes in free recall

By Sean M. Polyn, Kenneth A. Norman, Michael J. Kahana. 2009

705 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the Context Maintenance and Retrieval (CMR) model of memory search, a generalized version of the temporal context model (TCM) of Howard and Kahana (2002a), which proposes that memory search is driven by an internally maintained context representation composed of stimulus-related and source-related features. In the CMR model, organizational effects (the tendency for related items to cluster during the recall sequence) arise as a consequence of associations between active context elements and features of the studied material. Semantic clustering is due to longstanding context-to-item associations, whereas temporal clustering and source clustering are both due to associations formed during the study episode. A behavioral investigation of the three forms of organization provides data to constrain the CMR model, revealing interactions between the organizational factors. Finally, we discuss the implications of CMR for our understanding of a broad class of episodic memory phenomena, and suggest ways in which this theory may guide our exploration of the neural correlates of memory search.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Extending Machine Language Models toward Human-Level Language Understanding (2019, background): “Retrieval could be based on a combination of context and item information, similar to human memory (70).”
Neural Evidence for a Distinction Between Short-Term Memory and the Focus of Attention (2011, positive): “The idea that memory representations can be reactivated during short-delay tests of STM is anticipated in neuralnetwork models of serial order recall (Botvinick & Plaut, 2006; Burgess & Hitch, 2006; Farrell & Lewandowsky, 2002; Burgess & Hitch, 1999) and in retrieved context models of memory search ”
Discovering event structure in continuous narrative perception and memory (2016, neutral): “, 1995) and recall (Polyn et al., 2009) have been formulated under the assumption that the input to the memory system is a series of discrete items to be remembered.”
The expected value of control: An integrative theory of anterior cingulate cortex function (2013, neutral): “…and/or biases for responding (governing speed-accuracy tradeoffs; Bogacz et al., 2006; Wiecki and Frank, 2013), templates for attention or memory search (Desimone and Duncan, 1995; Olivers et al., 2011; Polyn et al., 2009), and modulators of emotion (Johns et al., 2008; McClure et al., 2006).”