Procedural memory

The cerebrocerebellum is involved with the planning, programming, and initiation of voluntary activity. It also participates in procedural memories or motor learning. This region of the cerebellum receives input from and provides output to the cortical motor areas directly. Lesions of the cerebrocerebellum cause delays in initiating movements and irregularities in the timing of multistep movements. 

Declarative memory vs. procedural memory. Based on the types of memory selectively affected in such amnesic patients, memory can be divided into two major classes declarative memory and procedural memory. 

Gohen, M. D. Bacdayan, P. 1994. Organizational routines are stored as procedural memory evidence from a laboratory study. Organizational Science, 5 554-568. 

As far as efficacy is concerned, this is a model of procedural memory with more than a sensorimotor aspect, because it includes considerations of instinctive priority and emotional salience. It is thus the Freudian unconscious broadened and made user-friendly. No longer a cauldron of dread desire, my unconscious procedural repertoire is both rich in sources and ready to respond. I don t have to think about most of what I do. It just happens automatically, appropriately, and adaptively. My emotional brain knows that helicopters, Vermont tractors, and nervous exhibit designers have something in common. 

Long-term memory then stores and operates on very diverse types of information, and there are many theories as to how the different types of information are represented and organized within it. Research shows that long-term memory operates according to a number of different systems, and researchers disagree as to exactly how it should be divided up. Yet there are some very influential theoretical divisions of long-term memory that are now widely accepted. These are the divisions between procedural memory, episodic memory, and semantic memory. 

Often the information stored in procedural memory is difficult for the individual to articulate even though it is obvious from their smooth performance of the activity that they know it well. Procedural memories seem to last for a very long time, if not for a lifetime, and they are often very hard to change. Thus if one learns how to do something in a certain way, such as swim or play tennis, it can be very hard to change one s technique later. 

Procedural (or implicit) memory is acquired through habits, perception, or movement. Recall does not require conscious attention. After several tries, a toddler takes her first step. We know that if we stand too close to a flame, we will get burned. The classical conditioning of Pavlov s dog involved a type of procedural memory (that is, for the pooch). 

Different regions of the brain play specific roles in how we store memories. People who suffer damage to the hippocampus and temporal lobe of the brain, for example, may have trouble storing and recalling facts and events (declarative memory). But motor skills will remain intact (procedural memory). At least in part, those tasks originate elsewhere, in the cerebellum and the basal ganglia. 

Working memory is the store that is susceptible to interference and loss in the ongoing task context. Long-term memory loss would represent, for instance, a loss of skills or deep procedural memory... 

ACT-R is composed of perceptual-motor and memory modules implemented as production rules. Both declarative and procedural memory are modeled. A pattern-matching mechanism is used to select production rules applicable to the situation. Buffers are used to interact with and represent the state of modules. ACT-R is implemented as a computer language. Users create a program containing relevant task data to model the task and task performance. An extension of ACT called SNIF-ACT that incorporates a Bayesian navigation mechanism was described earlier in this chapter (Fu and Pirolli 2007). 

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