Realizing Forgetting in a Modified Sparse Distributed Memory System

This paper presents research on the development of effective forgetting mechanisms for the modified Sparse Distributed Memory (SDM) system, which shows promise to be a good candidate for use as Transient Episodic Memory (TEM) in software agents such as IDA. Possible theories and mechanisms for forgetting are retrieval failures, decay and interference. The SDM architecture has inherent features to effect interference and retrieval failures. We have implemented two decay mechanisms in the modified SDM system. In this paper, we present the decay mechanisms and the experimental results. We argue that the decay mechanisms compliment the inherent features of the SDM architecture in realizing forgetting for TEM