AN ACTIVATION-BASED THEORY OF IMMEDIATE ITEM MEMORY

We present an activation-based computational model of immediate item memory, which is proposed to underlie activation based processes within the pre-frontal cortex (mediating primary memory) that trigger episodic learning processes in the medial temporal cortex (secondary memory). We show that the model is able to capture a range of basic phenomena such as Brown-Peterson forgetting functions and serial position functions in cued and free-recall. The model makes unique predictions for presentation rate and list length effects, which were tested (and supported) in subsequent experiments.