Episodic representation: A mental models account

Abstract

This paper offers a modeling account of episodic representation. I argue that the episodic system constructs mental models: representations that preserve the spatiotemporal structure of represented domains. In prototypical cases, these domains are events: occurrences taken by subjects to have characteristic structures, dynamics and relatively determinate beginnings and ends. Due to their simplicity and manipulability, mental event models can be used in a variety of cognitive contexts: in remembering the personal past, but also in future-oriented and counterfactual imagination. As structural representations, they allow surrogative reasoning, supporting inferences about their constituents which can be used in reasoning about the represented events.

Keywords: episodic simulation; event cognition; memory; mental model; structural representation.

FIGURE 1

A simple structural model.

FIGURE 2

Running a kinematic model of a complex episode. The model simulates the changing states in an episode, re-enacting its spatiotemporal dynamics. As the model “unfolds,” the reconstructed context provides cues for the retrieval of elements associatively bound to it. The blue arrows represent binding of items and locations in a given (sub-)event. The red arrows represent sequential binding of elements in the event sequence.

FIGURE 3

Event model construction in episodic recall. A kinematic event model is constructed at recall with information from a variety of sources, including episodic traces, event markers, and schemas. How much weight is given to information from the different sources depends on a number of factors; most notably—availability, goals and context. The construction of an event model itself leaves “procedural” traces that can be exploited in subsequent recall.