The principle of activity specificity in episodic memory

Abstract

In psychology in Russia chess has repeatedly been model for studying fundamental problems of thinking; memory; creative and its motivation; emotional, sense, and personal regulation; and creative as changed by information technologies (Bartashnikov, 1988; Blumenfeld, 1948 ; Levit, 1988; Tikhomirov, 1967, 1984; Vasilyev, 1980; Vasyukova, 1986, 1995,1999, 2001, 2008, 2009a,b, 2012a; Vinogradov, 1972; and others). The problem of thinking and communication has been studied by using information on chess playing: Krogius (1986) studied inter- personal cognition in conflict activities; Kurochkina (1997) analyzed impact of direct communication with a on creativity.Blumenfeld (1948) described thinking of a chess player as practical and connected with emotional-volitional sphere. The thinking of a chess player is visual and has a limited time frame. Experience of past is basis of thinking process. Among semantic entities, which are formed in experience, visual and verbal ideas are identified. A distinction is made between thinking in combinational and in positional game. The two main forms of intellectual in combinational game are calculation and vision. In positional game, a plan in which verbal thinking dominates plays a significant role. However, even in a positional game thought process is not confined to reasoning.According to Tikhomirov (1967), Chess is a special case of processes of selection of a specific practical action in a concrete situation on basis of studying peculiarities of this situation. In practice this process is included in all types of human activity (p. 176).In works of Tikhomirov and his disciples in field of psychology of thinking, a breakthrough occurred in sphere of unconscious mental processes, in many respects thanks to their use of chess as a model object. The very idea of thinking as a purely rational process changed; a semantic content was added to its composition. Thinking has been regarded as an integral with unconscious components, motivation, and emotional regulation. Thanks to emergence of new research methods possibilities of studying thinking have greatly expanded. There are new concepts: operational sense (unverbalized and verbalized), dynamic conceptual system, and psychological system. The concepts of goal formation and sense formation are being intensively developed.In this article, episodic memory and principle of of coding, which acts in episodic memory, are studied by using relevant information from chess players. We interpret this principle from position of theory of activity.Episodic memory, which stores episodes of past, has been object of most of psychological research on memory, from work of H. Ebbingaus to that of modern cognitive psychologists. Its functioning is closely linked with other kinds of long-term memory, both procedural and semantic. According to E. Tulving, procedural memory corresponds to a anoetic consciousness (unconscious regulation), semantic memory corresponds to noetic consciousness (I know), and episodic memory corresponds to autonoetic consciousness (I remember) (Nourkova, 2008).In episodic memory principle of specificity of coding applies: avail- ability of information from past is determined by coincidence of key elements of encoding and retrieval of that information.However, the principle of implies passivity of subject and therefore recognizes conditionality of accuracy of episodic memory for external situational reasons (Nourkova, 2008, p. 211). From point of view of Nourkova, most adequate interpretation is combined one, which should be called the principle of specificity. According to this interpretation, those aspects of information flow that correspond to ongoing activities are stably encoded. …