Chauvet (2024)

Memory Traces: Are Transformers Tulving Machines?

arXiv

Find It

DOI

Abstract

Memory traces--changes in the memory system that result from the perception and encoding of an event--were measured in pioneering studies by Endel Tulving and Michael J. Watkins in 1975. These and further experiments informed the maturation of Tulving's memory model, from the GAPS (General Abstract Processing System} to the SPI (Serial-Parallel Independent) model. Having current top of the line LLMs revisit the original Tulving-Watkins tests may help in assessing whether foundation models completely instantiate or not this class of psychological models.

Reference

Chauvet, J. M. (2024). Memory Traces: Are Transformers Tulving Machines?. arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.08543. https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2404.08543

What Rests on This

1 mechanism cites this source. Each finding below is quoted as it appears on that mechanism's own page.

Context-Dependent Retrieval Memory Processes

Measured in AI

A 2024 preprint gave one model (Mistral-7B) Tulving and Watkins's cue-valence experiment, built on encoding specificity, with the word list still visible in the chat: associative cues recalled targets about as often as in the original human data (0.49 and 0.38 vs 0.52 and 0.43), while rhyme cues did far worse (0.11 and 0.14 vs 0.45 and 0.43)