TY - JOUR
T1 - A test of parallel versus serial processing applied to memory retrieval
AU - Ross, Brian H.
AU - Anderson, John R.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by Grants BNS 76-00959 and BNS 78-17463 from NSF to John Anderson and was started when both authors were at Yale University. We thank R. Evans, A. Marley. J. Townsend, an anonymous reviewer, and, especially, D. Vorberg for comments. We also thank E. Thomas and B. Wandell for discussion of the convolution proofs. Both authors contributed equally to this article; the order of authorship was determined by a coin toss. Requests for reprints should be sent to John R. Anderson. Department of Psychology. Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213.
Copyright:
Copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1981/12
Y1 - 1981/12
N2 - Townsend has identified necessary and sufficient conditions that reaction time distributions meet if they are produced by two underlying processes that are parallel and within-stage independent. This paper describes an attempt to use one of these conditions to assess the assumption of independent parallel memory retrieval in Anderson's ACT theory. In the experimental test, subjects studied profession-location pairs, with each profession and location included in two pairs. One pair had a high frequency of presentation and the other had low. When cued with a profession (or location), subjects responded with the first of the two studied locations (or professions) that came to mind. The reaction times to these responses were used to test the ACT assumption of independent parallel search. The problems encountered in trying to apply Townsend's abstract test to a concrete situation included the need to consider mixtures and convolutions of distributions and empirical, rather than theoretical, distributions. These difficulties are discussed at length and some formal analyses concerning their effect on the test are given. Despite these problems, we were able to use Townsend's test and the results of the experiment support the within-stage independent parallel assumption of ACT.
AB - Townsend has identified necessary and sufficient conditions that reaction time distributions meet if they are produced by two underlying processes that are parallel and within-stage independent. This paper describes an attempt to use one of these conditions to assess the assumption of independent parallel memory retrieval in Anderson's ACT theory. In the experimental test, subjects studied profession-location pairs, with each profession and location included in two pairs. One pair had a high frequency of presentation and the other had low. When cued with a profession (or location), subjects responded with the first of the two studied locations (or professions) that came to mind. The reaction times to these responses were used to test the ACT assumption of independent parallel search. The problems encountered in trying to apply Townsend's abstract test to a concrete situation included the need to consider mixtures and convolutions of distributions and empirical, rather than theoretical, distributions. These difficulties are discussed at length and some formal analyses concerning their effect on the test are given. Despite these problems, we were able to use Townsend's test and the results of the experiment support the within-stage independent parallel assumption of ACT.
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U2 - 10.1016/0022-2496(81)90043-2
DO - 10.1016/0022-2496(81)90043-2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0038912540
SN - 0022-2496
VL - 24
SP - 183
EP - 223
JO - Journal of Mathematical Psychology
JF - Journal of Mathematical Psychology
IS - 3
ER -