A computational account of learning and memory

什么是记忆？人们怎么不用尝试就能学会呢？什么是直觉，它是如何发展的？我的研究计划就是为了回答这些问题。为了实现这一目标，我和我的学生开发了描述人类学习和记忆数学的计算机模型。通过将记忆描述为特定经历的存储，并同时提取这些记忆，我们已经能够解释人们如何对世界的规律变得敏感，他们如何学会预测即将发生的事件，以及为什么有些记忆在健忘症中幸存下来，而另一些记忆却丢失了。当前提案的研究是建立在我们之前研究三个新问题的努力之上的。我们如何在没有刻意努力的情况下做出明智的推断？为什么随着年龄的增长，有些学习方式变得越来越难，而另一些学习方式却一直很容易？直觉是一种特殊的过程，还是仅仅是经过伪装的识别记忆？我和我的学生将结合计算机建模和实验室实验来提供这些重要问题的答案和解决方案。

What is memory? How do people learn without even trying? What is intuition and how does it develop? My research program is aimed at answering these questions. To achieve this goal my students and I develop computer models that describe the mathematics of human learning and memory. By representing memory as a store of specific experiences and retrieving those memories in parallel, we have been able to explain how people become sensitive to regularities in the world, how they learn to anticipate upcoming events, and why some kinds of memory are spared in amnesia whereas others are lost. Research in the current proposal builds on our previous efforts to examine three new questions. How do we make smart inferences without deliberate effort? Why do some kinds of learning get harder with age whereas others remain easy? Is intuition a special process or is it just recognition memory disguised? My students and I will provide answers and solutions to these important questions by a combination of computer modelling and laboratory experiments.