Mechanisms of Retrieval from Memory
Associative priming is an important tool in studying processes in memory retrieval (e.g., McNamara, 1992; Ratcliff & McKoon, 1988). We have used associative priming to discriminate between different classes of models of memory retrieval; particularly in studying how context affects the retrieval of information from episodic memory.

In a recently published study (McNamara & Diwadkar, 1996), subjects read a set of sentences following which they participated in an old-new recognition task. Old items in the recognition list were words from sentences just read; new items were words not read in the sentences. A given trial consisted of a prime followed by a target; subjects responded to targets only. The relationship between primes and targets, and between successive targets in the recognition task was manipulated. Associative priming was clearly observed between related primes and targets and between related successive targets. Furthermore, responses to targets preceded by foil primes (unread words) were not inhibited compared to targets preceded by unrelated words. This pattern of results is is easily explained by models in which the facility of search in associative memory is guided by the targets association with the prime (e.g., Anderson, 1983; Murdock, 1982) but not by a compound search cue which includes both items. Quantitative fits of SAM (Gillund & Shiffrin, 1984), TODAM (Murdock, 1982) and ACT* (Anderson, 1983) to our data further confirmed this conclusion.

REFERENCES

Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gillund, G., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1984). A retrieval model for both recognition and recall. Psychological Review, 91, 1-67.

McNamara, T. P. (1992). Priming and constraints it places on theories of memory and retrieval. Psychological Review, 99, 650-662.

McNamara, T. P., & Diwadkar, V. A. (1996). The context of memory retrieval. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 877-892.

Murdock, B. B. (1982). A theory for the storage and retrieval of item and associative information. Psychological Review, 89, 609-626.

Ratcliff, R., & McKoon, G. (1988). A retrieval theory of priming in memory. Psychological Review, 95, 385-408.

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