Abstract from:

Chance, F. S. and Kahana, M. J. (1997) Testing the Role of Associative Interference and Compound cues in Sequence Memory. Bower, J. ed. Computational Neuroscience Trends in Research, 1997 (Plenum, NY).




A major problem facing computational models of human memory concerns the storage and retrieval of sequence information. Many current models assume a chaining of associations (i.e., each recalled item facilitates the recall of the next item in the sequence). Despite their successes, the failure to obtain predicted transfer from sequential to simple associative learning presents a serious challenge to these models. We hypothesize that multiple prior items serve as compound cues in sequential learning. A novel experimental method for examining the role of compound cues in sequence learning is presented. Preliminary experimental results support the compound cueing hypothesis of sequence memory. These results are discussed in terms of the predictions of distributed memory models.


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