Rational use of episodic and working memory: A normative account of prospective memory

Humans often simultaneously pursue multiple plans at different time scales, a capacity known as prospective memory (PM). The successful realization of non-immediate plans (e.g., post package after work) requires keeping track of a future plan while accomplishing other intermediate tasks (e.g., write a paper). Prospective memory capacity requires the integration of noisy evidence from perceptual input with evidence from both short-term working memory (WM) and long-term or episodic memory (LTM/EM). Here we formulate a set of empirical studies of prospective memory, all dual-task problems, as problems of computational rationality. We ask how a rational model should integrate noisy perceptual evidence and memory to maximize payoffs in these PM studies.