Title: Embodying cognition: A perceptual-gestural account of storage in short-term memory
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Short-term memory lies at the core of human behaviour, underpinning and acting as a constraint upon a gamut of highlevel mental processes such as learning, reading, thinking, calculating, talking, and so on. Commonly, short-term memory is regarded as a processing primitive whose operation is quintessentially cognitive: its behaviour can be understood in terms of discrete symbolic states that are manipulated via rules or algorithms This project seeks to gather evidence in favour of a radically alternative view, namely that short-term memory is embodied, that is, its key phenomena reflect limitations of perceptual-motor systems, not cognitive systems The project capitalises on recent advances in our understanding of the planning of motor actions that suggest a model of the body's action system is built up which can be used to imagine how actions would be carried out. This system can be used variously to imagine a forehand tennis stroke or to talk to oneself in the form of the execution of a motor plan in 'emulation' mode: this does not produce any overt action but is accompanied by something close to the sensations that accompany the real action (when speaking to oneself one can hear a voice). We argue that this system is used to help remember event sequences (which are ultimately actions) over the short-term and accordingly that what is remembered is determined largely by how well the events to be remembered fit the motor plan and by the limits to the way in which the motor plan can be used. This claim that short-term memory is embodied is addressed from four standpoints: first, by examining the extent to which performance depends on the coherence of the mapping of perceptual representation to the motor plan that holds the tobe- remembered item sequences in readiness for output, both by examining differences between sensory modalities and by examining the effects of perceptual organisation within modality; second, by studying the way in which habits of speech planning (particularly grouping, stress and co-articulation) deployed subvocally interact with the nature of the material to be remembered to determine the nature and number of errors; third, studies that use recognition procedures eliminate the requirement for sequential covert motor output processes and provide a test the claim that sensory-motor mechanisms constitute the actual memory process, and are not just slave processes peripheral to some 'core' cognitive mnemonic process; fourth, using a studentship, experiments will be used to explore whether the embodied approach -- based typically on memory for verbal sequences -- can be extended to serial spatial memory. Pathways to impact will be chiefly through publication in internationally-leading journals and presentations at international conferences, giving rise to world-wide academic advancement and contributing to sustaining the UK's international scientific competitiveness in the area of psychology research, and leadership in the topic of short term memory in particular. Because short-term memory underpins so much of mental life, it is a construct used by a wide range of researchers (including ones from a variety of disciplines: among them cognitive scientists, cognitive neuroscientists, developmental psychologists) and deployed in a very wide variety of professional practice (e.g., clinical neuropsychology, educational practice, ergonomics). Localising short-term memory within the sensory-motor system helps localise its action neuroanatomically which may have important interdisciplinary spin-offs which other research teams should be in a good position to exploit. At the same time the project will provide training to the post-doctoral researcher and research student in a range of real-time experimental methods using speech, sound and visual stimuli and will give them unique experience in using speech technology in the analysis of memory responses.


Research activity codes: 1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH