Chapter 1. Spreading Activation

1.1 Introduction

You have probably noticed by now that the field of memory is of particular interest to psychologists. Here is another experiment involving memory. In this case, the results will illuminate how our semantic memory (memory for facts) is organized.

1.2 Experiment Setup

1.3 Instructions

You will need to press the space bar to begin the experiment. A fixation mark will then appear in the center of the screen. Please look at this mark. After a brief period, pairs of letter strings will appear on the screen two at a time, one over the other. Your task will be to determine whether these letter strings are English words. If both letter strings are words, please press the G on your keyboard. If either of the letter strings is a non-word, please press the H.

There will be four blocks of 24 pairs of letter strings. There will be a two-minute rest between each block of trials.

1.4 Experiment

1.5 Results

1.6 Debriefing

This experiment replicates work done by Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971) with regard to semantic memory organization. Specifically, their work supports the spreading activation theory of semantic memory organization. Psychologists, particularly Endel Tulving, demonstrated a distinction in long-term memory between episodic and semantic memory. Episodic memory is memory for events in your life; semantic memory is memory for facts. While the organization of episodic memory is fairly straightforward in that it follows a timeline within an individual’s life, the organization of semantic memory has been less clear. A good deal of memory research has been devoted to determining how this part of our memory storage is organized. The spreading activation theory seeks to explain semantic memory organization by explaining how the activation of one concept leads to an activation, albeit lesser in magnitude, of concepts associated with it.

References:

Meyer, D. E., & Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 90(2), 227-234.

Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82, 407-428.

Collins, A. M., & Quillian, M. R. (1969). Retrieval time from semantic memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 240-247.

1.7 Quiz