MEM: Memory Subsystems As Processes

A Multiple-Entry, Modular memory (MEM) system is a process oriented approach; the primary descriptive units are cognitive actions. MEM specifies a set of actions that, working together in various combinations, have memorial consequences. The subsystems in MEM perform different functions or solve different problems they also allow more than one type of problem to be worked on more or less simultaneously. MEM offers a more fine-grained division of learning and memory than do the top-down/bottom-up and conceptually-driven/data-driven distinctions and consequently may prove more analytically useful. The language of MEM provides a means of clarifying problems with some alternative general frameworks—such as those proposing distinctions between episodic and semantic memory, between procedural and declarative memory, and between conceptual processing and data-driven processing. The terms top-down or conceptually-driven cover processing ranging across MEM’s perceptual and reflective subsystems. MEM provides a framework for understanding a wide range of mnemonic phenomena.