Novelty monitoring, metacognition, and control in a composite holographic associative recall model: implications for Korsakoff amnesia.

This article stems from a technical problem in composite-trace distributed models of human memory and particularly in the Composite Holographic Associative Recall Memory (CHARM) model. Briefly, the composite trace--used as a central construct in such models--can become catastrophically out of control. To solve the problem, a prestorage novelty-familiarity monitor and a simple control procedure need to be implemented. Eight lines of experimental evidence converge on the idea that output from such a novelty-familiarity monitor underlies people's metacognitive judgments of feeling of knowing. Breakdown of the monitoring-control mechanism produces Korsakoff-like symptoms in the model. Impairments in feeling-of-knowing judgments and the failure to release from proactive inhibition, both characteristic of Korsakoff amnesia, are thus attributed to a monitoring-control failure rather than to deficits in the basic memory system.