The Contextual Memory System

This model of learning and memory, the Contextual Memory System, (CMS), starts with no features and no items in memory. It thus starts as a complete tabula rasa. However, it does have built in perceptual MECHANISMS which given an object in the outside world, it can build very large numbers of features of the object. Thus, the ACTUAL features that are built are purely a function of the objects that the agent encounters in the world. If the agent spends a lot of time looking at birds and rabbits, then he will naturally acquire many features relevant to birds and rabbits. In contrast, if he spends his time studying the business news, then he will build many financial features.

The trouble with testing such a grand theory of learning and memory, is this problem that what we know affects how we see the world, and therefore there is an immense problem in ever getting a computational model working. Historically, Skinner and the behaviourists banned all theorising about what went on inside peoples' heads as unscientific, because it could not be tested. These dark ages of psychology which ran from about 1930 to 1960 and even beyond were eventually supplanted by modern Cognitive Psychology, and, in particular, Cognitive Science.

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