A theory of interpretive clustering in free recall
Abstract
A stochastic model of short-term verbal memory is proposed, in which the psychological state of the subject is encoded as the instantaneous position of a particle diffusing over a semantic graph with a probabilistic structure. The model is particularly suitable for studying the dependence of free-recall observables on semantic properties of the words to be recalled. Besides predicting some well-known experimental features (contiguity effect, forward asymmetry, word-length effect), a novel prediction is obtained on the relationship between the contiguity effect and the syllabic length of words; shorter words, by way of their wider semantic range, are predicted to be characterized by stronger forward contiguity. A fresh analysis of archival data allows to confirm this prediction.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1611.08928,
title = {A theory of interpretive clustering in free recall},
author = {Francesco Fumarola},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.08928},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
24 pages, 8 figures