CompCog: Towards a unified account of when external cues are beneficial or detrimental during memory search

想象一下，你正在谈论一次家庭度假，但你不记得每一个细节。有时，有人在谈话中插话提醒你发生的事情，帮助你记住更多。我们能否开发出一种自动选择提醒事项的方法，从而提高人们的记忆力？这项研究旨在通过检查和模拟“记忆空间”中的相互作用来研究提醒是如何影响记忆的。这些模型使我们能够测试不同的理论，并对提醒的效果做出预测。这项研究的发现可能对教育环境中的个人或有记忆障碍的人设计记忆干预有价值。与来自环境的线索有帮助的直觉相反，大量研究表明，在记忆搜索过程中，线索的呈现有时是有害的。我们认为，线索的有效性主要取决于它们的内容和时间。文献中提出了各种关于记忆线索的描述性理论，但它们很难从经验上加以区分，这影响了我们预测不同类型线索及其时间的有效性的能力。为了解决这些问题，我们将把记忆线索的描述性理论转化为数学透明的计算模型。这种方法使我们能够定量地比较这些理论对线索影响的预测，并确定最符合数据的模型。这个模型可以用来模拟所有可能的线索内容和时间组合的效果，从而选择最有效的线索。总的来说，拟议的研究计划有助于统一解释外部线索何时有益或有害。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Imagine you're talking about a family vacation you went on, but you can't remember every detail. Sometimes, someone chimes in during the conversation to remind you of things that happened, helping you remember more. Could we develop an automated way to select reminders and improve someone's memory? This research aims to study how reminders affect memory by examining and modeling their interaction in a 'memory space'. These models allow us to test different theories and make predictions about the effect of reminders. The findings from this research could be valuable in designing memory interventions for individuals in educational settings or those with memory impairments.Contrary to the intuition that cues from the environment are helpful, a substantial body of research demonstrates that the presentation of cues during memory search can sometimes be detrimental. We argue that the effectiveness of cues depends critically on their content and timing. Various descriptive theories of memory cues have been proposed in the literature, but they have been difficult to distinguish empirically, which impacts our ability to predict how effective different kinds of cues and their timing would be. To address these issues, we will translate descriptive theories of memory cues into mathematically-transparent computational models. This approach enables us to quantitatively compare the predictions of these theories regarding the effects of cues, and identify the model that best matches the data. This model can then be used to simulate the effect of all possible combinations of cue content and timing, enabling the selection of the most effective cues. Overall, the proposed research program contributes to a unified account of when external cues are beneficial or detrimental.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.