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The Connection Between Associative Memory and Semantic Similarity: Evidence From Fan Experiments and Distributional

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Semantic similarity alone can cause memory interference, similar to learned associations. This finding connects vector-space models of meaning with memory retrieval theories, impacting how we understand associative interference.

Keywords:
Associative memoryFan effectMemory retrievalRational analysis of memorySkip‐gram modelsSpreading activationVector‐based models of meaning

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Memory retrieval is hindered by interference when multiple concepts match a retrieval cue, leading to slower and less accurate recall.
  • The fan effect, studied via person-location pairs, demonstrates this interference by manipulating the number of facts linked to a concept.
  • Current theories attribute interference to spreading activation, where linked memory traces reduce target retrievability.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if spreading activation, causing memory interference, is triggered by semantic similarity in addition to explicitly learned associations.
  • To formally connect vector-space models of meaning with the rational analysis of memory.
  • To demonstrate that semantic similarity alone is sufficient to produce associative interference in memory.

Main Methods:

  • Replication of the classical fan effect in two behavioral experiments using Dutch-language stimuli.
  • Experiment 2 constructed semantic fans using pretrained word embeddings to test for interference elicited by semantic similarity alone.
  • A simulation analyzed how similarity in embedding spaces predicts retrieval difficulty, aligning with rational memory models.

Main Results:

  • The classical fan effect was replicated, confirming interference from learned associations.
  • Items in higher semantic-fan conditions were retrieved more slowly and less accurately, mirroring the classical fan effect.
  • Similarity in embedding spaces successfully predicted retrieval difficulty, consistent with rational memory models.

Conclusions:

  • Semantic similarity is sufficient to produce associative interference in memory, challenging the necessity of explicit learning for such effects.
  • Vector-space models of meaning can serve as formal implementations of the rational analysis of memory.
  • This research formally bridges the gap between computational models of meaning and cognitive theories of memory retrieval.