Remembering and
Consciousness
Chris Moulin
School of Psychology
University of Leeds
c.j.a.moulin@leeds.ac.uk
Plan
• Historical Perspectives - moving from
behaviousrim
• What is consciousness?
• Consciousness and contributions to memory
• Experiential States: Remembering and Knowing
History
Introspectionism
• 1879 official starting date of Psych
Wundt’s introspectionism
“The subject matter of psychology is the whole
manifoldness of qualitative contents presented
for our experience.” (1912)
His method:
“the immediate subjective perception of the
processes of consciousness, or introspection”
(1908)
• Like wine tasting
Functionalism
• Wundt’s student, Cattell
liked measuring things (e.g. RT) – the first American Psychologist
• Most importantly, James (1842-1910)
William, brother of Henry James
What’s consciousness for?
The start of studying mental operations not contents
information
consciousness
action
Behaviourism
• Skinner – get rid of ‘magical ideas’
Study relationship between environment and mind
= god
mind
• Watson (1878-1958)
Must measure things we can directly observe
• Modern equivalent: we will never understand the subjective nature
of consciousness (e.g. Searle, 1992) because it isn’t amenable to
scientific method
information
consciousness
stimulus
response
action
Cognitive Psychology
• Cognition retains some of the skepticism
towards consciousness
• But key theories verge on it:
Central executive
Executive function
Implicit vs. Explicit
Metacognition
• These areas are where consciousness as
awareness and control hide away
Against Behavioursim
“If a person leaves her house with an umbrella, we might explain that
behaviour by attributing to her a belief that it will rain. However, the
behaviour in question cannot be adequately explained merely in terms of
that single belief causing the behaviour. She must also want to keep dry.
Thus we must at least attribute a desire in addition to the belief to explain
her behaviour.”
(Gennaro, Herrmann & Sarapata, 2006, p.374)
Subjective experience is a valid interest for
psychologists and memory researchers
What is consciousness?
• Pinker (1997)
Sentience
Access to Information
Self-Knowledge
Sentience describes subjective experience, phenomenal awareness,
feelings
Access to information considers the ability to report your ongoing
mental experience or operations.
Self-knowledge considers whether an organism can know itself and
its impact on the world.
I cannot only say I feel happy (sentience) and I can see red (access
to information), I can also say, ‘Hey, here I am, Chris Moulin,
feeling happy and seeing red.’
• Others: binding, giving events unity (Kant, 1781)
Modern views
• Dennett: Consciousness Explained
Neuropsychology and
Consciousness
• Split brain patients: Unity of consciousness
• Blindsight patients: Subjective and objective
streams of information
• Cotard’s delusion and Capgras’ delusion:
Fundamental disruption to the feeling of
something
Consciousness: Contributions
to Memory
• Everyday Memory Errors and the Unity of
Consciousness
• Implicit versus Explicit Memory
• Feelings of Knowing
• Tip of the Tongue
Experiential States
Tulving (1985)
• Experiential States mark the difference between
Episodic and Semantic Memory
• Remembering and Knowing
• Autonoetic and noetic consciousness
• Others describe this as: Memory can be described as
having…
Recollection based component.
Familiarity based component.
Remembering and Knowing
• ‘Recollective Experience Paradigm’
Familiar or ‘know’
judgements.
F.
Little or no
surrounding context.
Semantic Memory.
Remember
judgements.
R.
Rich, evocative
contextual
information.
Episodic memory.
Cognitive Feelings
• We have become interested in what we term Cognitive
Feelings.
• These are feeling states that let us experience the
current state of the cognitive system.
• There is a conscious state, for example, which lets us
experience remembering.
• Like many things, neuropsych disorder and daily error
are helping us understand these things, e.g. déjà vu
Dickens & Déjà vu.
•
"At sunset, when I was walking alone, while the horses rested, I
arrived upon a little scene, which, by one of those singular
mental operations of which we are all conscious, seemed
perfectly familiar to me, and which I see distinctly now. There
was not much in it. In the blood red light, there was a mournful
sheet of water, just stirred by the evening wind; upon its margin
a few trees. In the foreground (of a view of Ferrara) was a group
of silent peasant girls leaning over the parapet of a little bridge,
looking now up at the sky, now down into the water. In the
distance a deep dell; the shadow of approaching night on
everything. If I had been murdered there in some former life I
could not have seemed to remember the place more thoroughly
or with more emphatic chilling of the blood; and the real
remembrance of it acquired in that minute is so strengthened by
the imaginary recollection, that I hardly think I could forget it. "
• (Dickens, Pictures from Italy).
The Dreamy States
• Sir James Crichton-Browne: ‘sudden invasions
of vaguely reminiscent consciousness’
Moreover, something is or seems,
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare.
Tennyson
William James
• “The Varieties of Religious Experience” Mysticism.
• ‘… a kind of insight into which I cannot help
ascribing some metaphysical significance.’
• “There are no differences but differences of
degree between different degrees of difference
and no difference.”
Wilder Penfield
• “Interpretive Response or Interpretive Illusion”
Déjà states
• Déjà states are states of the malfunction of
cognitive feelings.
• Déjà vu - having seen before.
• Déjà vecu - having lived this moment before.
• And there are many others
Two forms of déjà vu.
• Déjà vu
‘already seen’
an inappropriate feeling of familiarity
• Déjà vecu
‘already lived’
an inappropriate feeling of recollection
Déjà vécu
• A series of cases
Déjà vecu.
• An inappropriate sensation of remembering in
the absence of objective memory
Déjà vecu anecdotes.
• “He does seem to have considerable problems with a sense of déjà
vu [or actually vecu], both when reading his scientific journals and
when reading the newspapers…..”
• Christmas cards.
• TV programmes and newspapers.
• Arriving at test session.
• Walking down the street.
• Tape player.
Radio Anecdote.
• ‘I suppose you’ve been interviewed by me
before…’
AKP justifies his response by
reporting recollective experiencelike sensations.
• Prediction: False positives are based on
‘remembering’ past events.
• This is déjà vecu.
Two Experiments on R & F
study
•Present to-be-remembered word
Rate pleasantness
test
Present yes/no recognition test
Report experiential state - R,F, Guess
(Justify response)
Two Experiments on R & F.
• Tested AKP & MA and age and educationmatched controls.
• Experiment 1.
20 words study and 20 distracters at test.
• Experiment 2.
30 words study and 30 distracters at test.
15 high and 15 low frequency words.
Experiment 1.
• For false positives these patients have sensations
similar to those for for hits.
Patients
Controls
Proportion of responses
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
R
Hits
F
G
Response Category
R
False Pos
F
G
Experiment 2 - I.
• Asked for justifications of responses.
Hits - ‘Remember’
AKP:
Polka: “I remember that this was Polish for female.”
Handkerchief:“I know you showed me this word because I
haven’t got one on me, I always forget it.”
Control:
Polka: “It’s a Polish word. I remember making the
association with polka dot.”
Experiment 2 - II.
False Positives - ‘Remember’
AKP:
Plaza: “Because Polish is the same, it means Beach.”
Tin: “I thought, it’s such a short word.”
Beginning: “It’s a long word – I remember the combination
of ‘inni’ it sticks in memory.
Bayonet: “I’m certain I saw it, today, yes. But what showing?
I remember it.”
Control:
Beginning: “I remember thinking that the beginning is
useful”.
Experiment 2 - III.
Hits - ‘Familiar’
AKP:
Edict: “Just a feeling”
Curiosity: “I simply seem to remember. It looks familiar.”
Control:
Impunity: “I know I’ve seen it, it’s familiar.”
Employment: “I think I’ve heard it.”
Experiment 2 - IV.
False Positives - ‘Familiar’
AKP:
Science: “Just rings a bell, it’s familiar”
Impression: “I saw it a moment ago, it’s a little more than a
guess.”
Control:
Preference: “I think, not remember.”
High frequency words.
• High freq. words = more likely to make F
responses.
• e.g. mouse
AKP
Control
Hits
FPs
R
0.38
0.23
F
0.46
0.46
G
0.15
0.31
Hits
FPs
R
0.46
0.00
F
0.46
1.00
G
0.08
0.00
Low Frequency words.
• Low freq. words = more likely to make R
responses.
• e.g. bayonet.
AKP
Control
Hits
FPs
R
0.77
0.44
F
0.23
0.33
G
0.00
0.22
Hits
FPs
R
0.77
0.00
F
0.23
0.00
G
0.00
1.00
New Patients
•
It is surprising how many cases start with anomolous TV bevahiour:
•
Mr K (Japan): Repeatedly changed channels constantly, trying to find a
program he hadn’t yet seen.
Mrs M (Scotland): Wrote to the BBC to complain about repeats and called
the TV repair man.
•
•
But also another case taking library tickets back saying they’d read
everything in the library.
Novelty
• Reports from carers and our own (word frequency) experiments
suggest an interesting ‘ironic’ error: Novelty leads to deja vecu.
• Mr K. first had constant and pronounced deja vecu in Paris - he’d
never been to France before.
• Mrs M. won’t watch new TV programmes, but will happily watch old
classic films - interestingly, because she says she’s forgotten what
happens.
• So do striking/novel items attract deja vecu?
Mrs M
• New Case: Mrs M (currently being tested)
• MCI or early dementia (MMSE = 28)
• Rarely watches TV and will not read new books - happy reading
books she knows she has already read but has ‘forgotten’
• Starts conversations with strangers, claiming she knows them.
When challenged says she’s forgotten where from - similar to AKP.
• Intact average IQ and only very slightly impaired recall
• Some mild recollective confabulation - Remembering high
frequency distracters.
• But ‘recognises’ a never presented face and freely confabulates an
age, occupation and status of face (good task to use).
Victoria Task RESULTS
• ‘BOOK’ Reverse DRM lures: 14% ‘hits’
• ‘YELLOW’ Standard DRM lures: 62% ‘hits’
• ‘RED’ Studied items, Hits: 100%
•
14% seems low - but consider how striking these items
are, and the likelihood of recognition amongst controls an impossible error on pilot testing.
100% Rejection-Rate Lures
• Mrs. M. provided the usual reasons for selecting these
100% rejection-rate lures and so showed recollective
confabulation in formal testing.
• We are now extending the Victoria Task and other
100% rejection-rate tasks to our entire patient group.
Clinical Notes
• All present with severe disruption to motivation, or engagement with
daily tasks
• But not very cognitively impaired
• Patients can sometimes use intact memory to counteract strong
‘feelings’
Clinical Notes, cont.
•
Age 60-90. All capable of living independently - at least at first.
•
Marginally poor recall but very poor recognition.
•
10 ‘clinical’ cases (over 3 years - all at one memory clinic).
•
15-20 worldwide correspondence cases (now with their own WWW net).
•
As common as cases of ‘false fame’ based on familiarity and not
recognition.
The feeling of novelty
• Could the feeling of novelty, mediated by
hippocampal networks, underlie at least in part
all these memory feelings?
So what?
• Informed care for people with memory
disorders.
• Understanding of psychotic & neurotic
states.
• A model of memory dysfunction, beliefs
and neuropsychological disorders.
• A need for conscious, aware sensations
and representations.
Déjà vu and cognitive feelings.
• Déjà vu is NOT false recognition.
This place feels very familiar.
QED. I’ve
been here before.
This place feels very familiar.
...But I know I’ve never
been here before.
Modes of cognition.
• These illusory sensations are evidence for
cognitive feelings.
• These feelings guide behaviour.
• And are disturbing when they are
inappropriate.
• They tell you what ‘mode’ you are in, and relate
to goal states
Cognitive Feelings II.
• When these sensation-derived goal states go
wrong, there are decrements to performance and
psychopathy.
•
•
False autobiographical beliefs (e.g. schizophrenia).
Apathy (e.g. déjà vecu patients).
A return to introspection?
• Cognitive psychology has tended to shy away from
subjective reports.
• But this is central to human experience.
• Investigate using:
Replication.
Sensitivity to known characteristics.
Theory-based approaches (the failing of classical
introspection).
Brain states.
Cognitive Feelings
There is a conscious state, for example, which lets us
experience remembering.
There are others:
Tip of the tongue
Feeling of knowing
Familiarity
Aha! Moment
•Usually, their presence is subtle: in keeping with
processing goals. But when they are not they are strange:
•E.g. the déjà states.
Other strange feelings
• The ‘butcher on the bus’ phenomenon,
Mandler (1980). Recognizing: The judgement of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252271
•
Metamorphopsia - faces don’t ‘feel’ right - e.g. pleasantly distorted
Ebata S, Ogawa M, Tanaka Y, Mizuno Y, Yoshida M. (1991). Apparent reduction in the
size of one side of the face associated with a small retrosplenial haemorrhage. J
Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry, 54:68-70.
• The ‘butcher on the bus’ phenomenon,
Mandler (1980). Recognizing: The judgement of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252271
•
Gopnik, A. (1998). Explanation as orgasm. MINDS AND MACHINES 8 (1):
101-118
•
Abstract: I argue that explanation should be thought of as the phenomenological mark of the operation of a particular kind of cognitive
system, the theory-formation system. The theory-formation system operates most clearly in children and scientists but is also part of our
everyday cognition. The system is devoted to uncovering the underlying causal structure of the world. Since this process often involves
active intervention in the world, in the case of systematic experiment in scientists, and play in children, the cognitive system is
accompanied by a 'theory drive', a motivational system that impels us to interpret new evidence in terms of existing theories and change
our theories in the light of new evidence. What we usually think of as explanation is the phenomenological state that accompanies the
satisfaction of this drive. However, the relation between the phenomenology and the cognitive system is contingent, as in similar cases
of sexual and visual phenomenology. Distinctive explanatory phenomenology may also help us to identify when the theory-formation
system is operating.
Other applications of R & F
•
•
•
•
Traumatic Memories
OCD
Education: The R to K shift
Aging