Professor Erik Reichle (Macquarie University)

Professor Sally Andrews Memorial Lecture on Cognitive Psychology: Towards a Model of the Reconstructed Self

Abstract

Our sense of self is dependent upon our experiences and how the “thread” of our autobiography is reconstructed from memories of our contextually rich experiences.  In this talk, I will describe how an instance-based model of human memory, MINERVA 2 (Hintzman, 1986), can be used as a framework for understanding how this happens.  I will report simulations that show how autobiographical sequences can be generated from discrete memories of unrelated episodes, and how the basic processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval can give rise to distortions of self (e.g., dissociative identity disorder; Boag, 2024).

Bio

Erik D. Reichle received a BS in psychology from Iowa State University and a PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Since 2017, he has worked at Macquarie University where he is a professor of cognitive psychology.  His research uses computer modelling, eye-tracking, and brain-imaging to understand the mental processes that support skilled reading and how those processes are influenced by languages and writing systems.  He has published more than 120 articles on these topics and has recently authored two books: Computational models of reading: A handbook (Oxford University Press) in 2021, and The psychology of reading: Insights from Chinese (Cambridge University Press) in 2024.