PSYCH 140M Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Spreading Activation, Psych
Document Summary
Attempting a model that accounts for familiarity and typicality. Subjects decided how closely-related various pairs of words were. Then created a schematic representation of a fragment of semantic memory. The shorter the line between nodes, the more closely they are related. When a person sees, hears, or thinks about a concept, that node is activated. Activation then spreads most strongly to other concepts that closely- related, and more weakly to those that are more distantly-related. Example: short link between robin and bird and a longer link between. Penguin and bird our ability to recognize penguin will take longer. The time it takes to recognize a word increases if the number of links between word and preceding word is increased. Example: if red preceded by roses (1 link away), it would take less time to recognize than if it was preceded by flowers (2 links away) This model has been more successful than collins & quillian.
