PS_2.047 - Synergistic memory: the consequences of actions enter as an input into memory judgments

Brouillet, D. ¹ , Milhau, A. ¹ , Heurley, L. ¹ , Ferrier, L. ¹ , Rolland-Thiers, E. ¹ & Brouillet, T. ^{1, 2}

1 EPSYLON Montpellier 3 FRANCE
2 LPCS NICE Sophia Antipolis France

Traditionally, action has been considered as an output from the organism, whose consequences are not integrated in key models of cognition. Yet, living beings are able to learn and adapt in their environments, because they are reflective systems which change their internal state depending on behavior. Furthermore, memory’s function is to guide pattern of possible actions in current context. Therefore, the planned actions should take into account their consequences based on prior experiences. According to the synergistic theory, we suggest that the consequences of action enter as an input into memory judgments. Two experiments showed that after a learning task, a secondary task associating color to the consequence of the responses produced (correct vs incorrect) has an impact on the recognition task, when words were presented in those colors. The results showed that the rate of recognition, such as rates of false recognition and response times were influenced by past associations of color and answers in the secondary task. These results support the idea that memory is a dynamic system. The judgment of memory is not the product of the activation of stored knowledge, but it emerges from the interacting parts of the temporal aspects of the embodied activity.