Episodic memory and the control of performance

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The proposed program of research is an investigation of the role of memory in action. The core idea is that actions are often selected from memory of previous actions made in similar circumstances. This simple perspective integrates a wide range of theoretical ideas and empirical phenomena. The proposal spans three lines of research: Experiments on choice of action, experiments on the action cueing, and experiments on the control of action. In the first line of research, research participants select from several possible actions, and the nature of their choice is examined as a function of the current context and what has been done in the recent past. In the second line of research, cues are provided that potentially facilitate the retrieval of prior episodes, and the effect on response time is measured. And in the last line of research, the use of retrieval cues to control cognitive processing in different tasks will be studied. The focus in all of these is on the role of memory retrieval of prior episodes and how the nature of the memory retrieval cue affects that process.