Human Memory: BBS Call for Commentators

[Stevan Harnad]

        Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article by:

                MS Humphreys, J Wiles & S Dennis
                               on:
    TOWARD A THEORY OF HUMAN MEMORY: DATA STRUCTURES AND ACCESS PROCESSES

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current
BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to
suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to
become a BBS Associate, please send email to:

harnad at clarity.princeton.edu  or harnad at pucc.bitnet        or write to:
BBS, 20 Nassau Street, #240, Princeton NJ 08542  [tel: 609-921-7771]

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by
anonymous ftp according to the instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________

        TOWARD A THEORY OF HUMAN MEMORY:
	DATA STRUCTURES AND ACCESS PROCESSES

        Michael S. Humphreys, Department of Psychology
        Janet Wiles, Departments of Psychology and Computer Science
        Simon Dennis, Department of Computer Science
        University of Queensland
        QLD 4072 Australia
        mh at psych.psy.uq.oz.au

    KEYWORDS: amnesia, binding, context, data structure, lexical
    decision, memory access, perceptual identification, recall,
    recognition, representation.

    ABSTRACT: A theory of the data structures and access processes of
    human memory is proposed and demonstrated on 10 tasks. The two
    starting points are Marr's (1982) ideas about the levels at which
    we can understand an information processing device and the standard
    laboratory paradigms which demonstrate the power and complexity of
    human memory. The theory suggests how to capture the functional
    characteristics of human memory (e.g., analogies, reasoning, etc.)
    without having to be concerned with implementational details. Ours
    is not a performance theory. We specify what is computed by the
    memory system with a multidimensional task classification which
    encompasses existing classifications (e.g., the distinction between
    implicit and explicit, data driven and conceptually driven, and
    simple associative (2-way bindings) and higher order tasks (3-way
    bindings). This provides a broad basis for new experimentation.
    Our formal language clarifies the binding problem in episodic
    memory, the role of input pathways in both episodic and semantic
    (lexical) memory, the importance of the input set in episodic
    memory, and the ubiquitous calculation of an intersection in
    theories of episodic and lexical access.
--------------------------------------------------------------
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from
princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is
bbs.humphreys). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft.
Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise
you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article.
The file is also retrievable using archie, gopher, veronica, etc.
-------------------------------------------------------------
   To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp princeton.edu
   or
ftp 128.112.128.1
   When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
   Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
   yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
   To show the available files, type:
ls
   Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.humphreys
   When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit

These files can also be retrieved using gopher, archie, veronica, etc.
----------
Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers:
ftpmail at decwrl.dec.com
       and
bitftp at pucc.bitnet
that will do the transfer for you. To one or the
other of them, send the following one line message:

help

for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in
the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or
bitftp will then execute for you).

JANET users without ftp can instead utilise the file transfer facilities
at sites uk.ac.ft-relay or uk.ac.nsf.sun.  Full details are available on
request.
-------------------------------------------------------------