A computational account of learning and memory

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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.