Competing "retrieval" rule vs compiled "habit" rule?

[Erik M. Altmann]

There's some discussion of post-completion error and prospective 
memory from an (one) ACT-R perspective in the recent Altmann & 
Trafton paper on memory for goals (linked to the URL below, if your 
most recent issue of Cognitive Science isn't handy).  The relevant 
gist is that to avoid a post-completion error, or to act on an 
intention in a prospective memory task, there has to be an 
association created between a cue and a declarative representation of 
the to-be-performed goal.  We argue that the way people manage to 
avoid most post-completion errors is that through practice, or 
deliberate effort, they create associative links between the final 
"real" goal (getting the cash from the atm) and the post-completion 
goal (removing the atm card from the slot).  In your bread-errand 
scenario, you would have to have created an associative link between 
some cue related to the bread shop (a mental image of the sign, or a 
nearby landmark), such that when you attend to that cue in the actual 
environment, it will prime the goal.  The effects of WM load seem to 
fit naturally into this framework, because the greater the activation 
of distractor elements at that moment (elements related to the 
scintillating conversation you are engaged in), the less likely the 
relevant goal is to "intrude" on your thoughts such that you break 
off, apologize to your conversation partner, and park at the bread 
shop.

In terms of implementation, as I've sketched the model it implicates 
declarative memory, associative learning, and very general retrieval 
productions that simply take whatever's most active in memory at a 
given moment, as a function of base-level activation combined with 
associative activation.  Though this seems to fit in the general 
spirit of the rational memory model, I'm not sure it fits so well 
with current modeling practices.

Erik.
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Erik M. Altmann
Department of Psychology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI  48824
517-353-4406 (voice)
517-353-1652 (fax)
ema at msu.edu
http://www.msu.edu/~ema
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