Support: National Institute of Mental Health, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/

The aim of this project is to further develop and refine the Source of Activation Confusion (SAC) model of memory by empirically testing unique predictions of SAC and by carefully comparing the data generated by the simulation to the human data. The goal is to achieve a unified model of implicit and explicit memory phenomena that spans higher level metacognitive effects and lower level perceptual effects. Thirteen experiments are proposed to answer questions that will enable SAC to have a more detailed representation of memory and a more completely specified process model of encoding, matching and retrieval. The experiments are aimed not only at testing the generality of the model but also at shedding light on aspects of cognitive functioning that will constrain theory building (within SAC and other cognitive theories).

The specific questions addressed in this proposal are:
(1) Can we extend the SAC model to account for further phenomena in the area of both metacognition and implicit/explicit memory?
(2) What are the enabling conditions for forming higher level units in memory?
(3) When do we create separate episodic nodes for each presentation and when do we merge exposures?
(4) How are the perceptual features of conceptual information represented in memory? Do all memory traces operate under the same principles or is memory for semantic information privileged?
(5) To what extent can partial matching "errors" be explained by activation?