Jordan Suchow

Harvard Vision Lab

Memory maintenance in a partially observable mind

 

Visual memory enables a viewer to hold in mind the details of objects, textures, faces, and scenes. After initial exposure to an image, however, visual memories rapidly degrade because they are transferred from iconic memory, a high-capacity sensory buffer, to working memory, a low-capacity maintenance system whose flexibility affords a workspace for thought. How does memory maintenance work? In Part 1, after reviewing the history of "forgetting functions" and their use as a signature of the processes underlying degradation, I'll use them to reveal competitve interactions between memories and a stability threshold determining how weak of a memory can be maintained. In Part 2, I'll show that people can observe a memory in real time, tracking its status as it degrades. Finally, in Part 3, I'll connect memory to metamemory, likening the problem of memory maintenance to that of an agent who sequentially decides what to prioritize in a partially observable mind.