Patten K Jakob, Greer Katharine, Likens Aaron D, Amazeen Eric L, Amazeen Polemnia G
College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2020 Jul;48(5):772-787. doi: 10.3758/s13421-020-01015-7.
Free-recall tasks suggest human memory foraging may follow a heavy-tailed distribution, such as a Lévy flight, patch foraging, or area-restricted search - walk procedures that are common in other activities of cognitive agents, such as food foraging in both animals and humans. To date, research merely equates memory foraging with hunting in the physical world based on similarities in statistical structure. The current work supports that memory foraging follows a heavy-tailed distribution by using categories with quantitative distances between each item: countries, which have physical distances, and animals, from which cognitive distances can be derived using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure. Likewise, inter-item lag times follow a heavy-tailed distribution. The current work also demonstrates that inter-item distances and times are positively correlated, suggesting the organization of items in memory may be akin to the organization of a physical landscape. Finally, both studies show that participants' original, heavy-tailed lists of countries and animal names produce shorter overall distances traveled than random selection. Human memory foraging follows the same pattern as foraging in the natural world - perhaps because exposure to ecological settings informs our inner cognitive experience - leading to a processing and retrieval time benefit.
自由回忆任务表明，人类的记忆觅食可能遵循重尾分布，例如 Lévy 飞行、斑块觅食或区域限制搜索——这些是认知主体的其他活动中常见的搜索程序，比如动物和人类的食物觅食。迄今为止，基于统计结构的相似性，研究仅仅将记忆觅食等同于现实世界中的狩猎。当前的研究通过使用在每个项目之间具有定量距离的类别来支持记忆觅食遵循重尾分布：具有物理距离的国家，以及可以使用多维尺度分析（MDS）程序得出认知距离的动物。同样，项目间的滞后时间也遵循重尾分布。当前的研究还表明，项目间的距离和时间呈正相关，这表明记忆中项目的组织可能类似于物理景观的组织。最后，两项研究都表明，参与者最初的、重尾分布的国家和动物名称列表所产生的总行进距离比随机选择的要短。人类的记忆觅食与自然界中的觅食遵循相同的模式——也许是因为接触生态环境会影响我们内心的认知体验——从而带来处理和检索时间上的优势。
