UC Merced

By using differential equations to simulate cognition at the level of abstract mental constructs, the Complex Dynamical Integrated Episode Processing Hypothesis (CDIE) sheds new light on how ordered events are encoded in episode processing. It assumes that during the episode processing current distribution of activated information is influenced by external inputs of information in a complex way due to additional influences of spatiotemporal context and spontaneous decay. In particular, it integrates perception and existing memory, attention related to time based decay modification and as possible additional simple source of information, forgetting (including both constant and non-constant time-based decay and interference), relationship of this decay and item distinctiveness, false memories resulting from three possible mechanisms and their suppression, etc. Cognition is treated as a complex dynamical system and this model for the first time in the literature integrates all of the mentioned classical concepts and sheds light on their temporal dynamics. The following are some of the unique contributions of this project.

Episode processing is currently not a particularly well identified traditional research area. Nonetheless, there exists a continuity in cognitive processing explored in many other areas and "episode processing" or the "episode processor" are defined as a complex system changing in time.

This dynamical process model is an innovative application of an infinite-dimensional dynamical system to the ordered cognitive events in episode processing. On the one hand, while dynamical systems (DS) theory has been recognized as an important tool in cognitive science, this kind of infinite-dimensional system, where a continuum of values evolves in time, has not been heavily studied by modelers or philosophers discussing dynamical approaches to non-neural level cognitive science.

The model assumes that order in time is cognitively treated as order in space. A complex systems differential equations approach to time-as-space ideas of cognitive linguistics has not been quantitatively implemented in cognitive science and it shows promise to open an entirely new area of research in cognitive linguistics.