CompCog: Towards a unified account of when external cues are beneficial or detrimental during memory search

Imagine you're talking about a family vacation you went on, but you can't remember every detail. Sometimes, someone chimes in during the conversation to remind you of things that happened, helping you remember more. Could we develop an automated way to select reminders and improve someone's memory? This research aims to study how reminders affect memory by examining and modeling their interaction in a 'memory space'. These models allow us to test different theories and make predictions about the effect of reminders. The findings from this research could be valuable in designing memory interventions for individuals in educational settings or those with memory impairments.Contrary to the intuition that cues from the environment are helpful, a substantial body of research demonstrates that the presentation of cues during memory search can sometimes be detrimental. We argue that the effectiveness of cues depends critically on their content and timing. Various descriptive theories of memory cues have been proposed in the literature, but they have been difficult to distinguish empirically, which impacts our ability to predict how effective different kinds of cues and their timing would be. To address these issues, we will translate descriptive theories of memory cues into mathematically-transparent computational models. This approach enables us to quantitatively compare the predictions of these theories regarding the effects of cues, and identify the model that best matches the data. This model can then be used to simulate the effect of all possible combinations of cue content and timing, enabling the selection of the most effective cues. Overall, the proposed research program contributes to a unified account of when external cues are beneficial or detrimental.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.