Memory for associations and order

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From learning our way to work, to memorizing a script or notes of a melody, memory is essential for complex knowledge and behaviour. Understanding the cognitive and brain-activity basis of memory is therefore central to understanding naturally occurring behaviour and to designing effective artificial memories. This means remembering not just individual pieces of information, but also their relationships, the simplest of which are pairings (e.g., BRAD-ANGELINA), called "association-memory," or sequences (e.g., phone numbers, sequence of events in a story), called "order-memory." One intriguing idea is that the brain may carry out association- and order-memory in very similar ways. If this "common-processes" view were supported, that would allow us to understand a broader range of memory functions more concisely. There are two ways to build a common-processes model: 1) "Chaining" models learn an ordered list (ABC...) by linking together associations (A-B, B-C, ...). 2) "Positional coding" models learn a position-code for each item (A-1, B-2, C-3, ...), and can learn a set of pairs by linking paired items to a common position. Behavioural findings have both supported and challenged both models. Brain-activity measures (event-related potentials, ERPs, and rhythms) could help us compare models, but EEG studies have only begun to address order-memory.