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@pagefooting(immediate, left "@c<Technical Report 1996>",
center "@c<Computer Science>",
right "@c<Carnegie Mellon>")
@heading(Episodic Memory for External Information)
@heading(CMU-CS-96-167)
@center(@b(Erik M. Altmann))
@center(August 1996 - Ph.D. Thesis)
@center(FTP: Unavailable)
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@begin(text)

People make use of hidden external information, first recalling that
it exists and then finding it.  This dissertation investigates the
memory phenomena involved in recalling that external information
exists.  We present data in which a programmer navigates to hidden
features in a real-world task environment.  We then present a model
that accounts for this navigation by encoding and using simple
episodic memories for having seen a feature.  The model inherits
constraints from its underlying cognitive architecture, which specify
that learning is passive and pervasive, and that it creates simple
memories that depend on the feature itself being present as a cue.
The nature of these memories requires the model to recall features to
its mind's eye as cues in order to retrieve them.  This retrieval
process requires domain knowledge: familiarity with features in order
to imagine them, and an idea of when it would be useful to recall
having seen them.  Recalling that a hidden feature exists prompts the
model to scroll to that feature.  Thus the model's access to external
information is a function of passively-encoded episodic memories, and
retrieval of these memories using knowledge.  As a claim applied to
people, this appears to overlap with a recently-published theory of
@i(long-term working memory).  This theory proposes that experts, for
example in chess, use long-term memory to expand their working memory
in their domain of expertise.  We propose a ubiquitous episodic
long-term working memory, in which people store information about
features with little effort, and from which they retrieve this
information when it is relevant.

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@begin(transparent,size=10)
@b(Keywords:@ )@c<Cognitive science, Soar, episodic memory, psychology of
programming, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence>
@end(transparent)
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@end(text)
@flushright(@b[(340 pages)])