Oblivion Tracking: Towards a Probabilistic Working Memory Model for the Adaptation of Systems to Alzheimer Patients

Abstract

We introduce a new probabilistic working memory (WM) model that we intend to use to automatically personalize user interfaces with respect to Alzheimer patients' declining WM capacity. WM is the part of the human memory responsible for the conscious short-term storing and manipulation of information. It is known to be extremely limited and to be one of the strongest factors that impact individual differences in cognitive abilities. In particular, individuals suffering from Alzheimer's disease have significantly impaired WM capacities that worsen as the disease progresses. As a use case for our model, we describe a system that is designed to help patients with Alzheimer's disease choose the music track they would like to listen to from a given playlist. We discuss how our WM model could be used to adapt this system to each patient's disease progression in time and the consequent deterioration of her WM capacity.