This research will extend previous work developing a computer simulation model of human memory. The project includes two kinds of activities. First, the research will use simulation to explore interesting properties of the model in greater depth and to apply the model to human memory phenomena that were not considered in its initial development. Second, the research will include experiments on human memory, in order to better understand the reasons behind several of the model's apparent predictive failures. These experiments will focus on how information is retrieved from memory and how judgments regarding remembered events are based on the retrieved information. The questions to which the experiments are addressed are general ones, not model-specific, so that the experimental results will be of broad relevance to theories of human memory. Although this work is unlikely to have immediate practical application, it will further our understanding of the properties of human memory and its role in cognition, and so will contribute in the long run to applications in such areas as education and training, brain damage and amnesia, and biases in human judgment and decision making.
