Human Memory Adapts to Patterns of Information Use and Why (maybe) LarKC Should Too Lael Schooler

Simple Heuristics Shaped by human abilities –Vision, Hearing, Attention, Memory,... Cognitive Processes –Frugal: use little information –Fast: do little integration Ecologically Rational –Bet on environmental structure Adaptive Toolbox –Selection of Strategies (reinforcment Learning) –Joerg Rieskamp A set of questions to ask

Take Home Message Patterns of information use looks similar across domains –Language Speech to children New York Times Headlines –Social Contact Face to face We are likely to find similar patterns of information use in our case studies –Driving Behavior –Document access ACT-R’s Memory model (Activation Equations) learn to reflect these patterns of information use One flavor of Activation in LarKC’s retrieval experiments in WP 2 will take this approach –Can they scale? –Simpler better?

ACT-R Adaptive Control of T hought R ational An Integrated Theory of Cognition Anderson and colleagues (1973-present) –A couple hundred papers My home town (CMU) A framework to develop heuristics A source of core capacities Easily implement take-the-best, etc Ecologically Rational

Subsymbolic local connectionist Selection & Retrieval

Production Memory

Procedural Memory Modeled with Productions

Declarative Memory Reno Activation: 0.5 Chicago Activation: 2 New York Activation: = 2 Activation: 2.6

Rational analysis of memory Retrieve relevant information For each item in memory, make a Bayesian estimate of the probability that it will be useful in the present context. Automatic Basically Google + sensitivity to time Anderson (1990) Anderson & Schooler (1991, 2000) Schooler & Anderson (1997)

Rational Analysis of Memory and Functional Forgetting

Effects of Retention Interval on Memory Performance

Environmental Analysis Study informational demands of the environment –Match between memory and environment Do diverse domains share statistical structure? –language Speech to children New York Times headlines –social contacts Distribution of authors Anderson & Schooler (1991, 2000) Schooler & Anderson (1997)

Combined Effects of Recency & Context Speech New York Times

Combined Effects of Frequency & Recency

Human Social Contact Thorsten Pachur –University of Basel 10 participants 100 Day Diary Study Social contact was defined –as all face-to-face or phone conversations lasting at least five minutes –all electronic and other written communication of at least 100 words in length.

Recency Effects in Social Contacts

Driving Behavior Real Time City Case Study To what extent do our movments through the world share statistical structure with language and social contact?

Method

Data about 200 Subjects (1 car & 1 driver) one gps read every six minutes total reads 1 x 1 Kilometer grid

Austin

Recency Effects in Driving SE=

Recency Effects in Document Access Recker & Pitkow, "Predicting Document Access in Large Multimedia Repositories." ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 3, no. 4 (1996):

ACT-R Activation Equations

How a record’s activation grows and fades

Association to Context

Retrieval & Selection Estimate the probability (log-odds) that a RDF-Triple is needed in Reasoning/Deciding phase as a function of frequency, recency, spacing, and association to elements of the querry and method used Parameterize and Test whether ACT-R’s activation equations adequately model these probabilities Incorporate ACT-R’s base activation into other measures of association (e.g., semantic space model, Quantum Semantics, etc)

Take Home Message Patterns of information use looks similar across domains –Language Speech to children New York Times Headlines –Social Contact Face to face We are likely to find similar patterns of information use in our case studies –Driving Behavior –Document access ACT-R’s Memory model (Activation Equations) learn to reflect these patterns of information use One flavor of Activation in LarKC’s retrieval experiments in WP 2 will take this approach –Can they scale? –Simpler better?

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