Fragment and schema models for recall

Abstract

Two general conceptualizations of recall may be distinguished. One holds that recall is subserved by memory traces in which representations of different aspects of external events are linked directly to each other. The other holds that these representations are connected via a mediating concept. Formalizations of these views are provided by two theories examined by Ross and Bower (1981a): the "fragment" and "schema" models, respectively. Ross and Bower found that patterns of cued recall of clusters of words with a common theme were predicted well by the schema model, but not by the fragment model. Two experiments reported here show that the reverse is true if the clusters of words are selected randomly. Ross and Bower also considered separately a third theory, the "horizontal" model. However, the horizontal model is shown here to be a constrained form of the fragment model. Another constrained form of the fragment model, termed the "link" model, is introduced and is shown to provide an account of encoding as well as of retrieval that. although it is outstandingly parsimonious, is also approximatelyaccurate. Finally, it is shown that the memory structures characterized by the fragment model may be interpreted as either graphs or digraphs: that is, networks with either bidirectional or unidirectional connections between nodes.The question addressed here is that of how best to characterize the building blocks of the recall process. In particular, consider the memory representation that corresponds to an event with several different aspects. How are the different components corresponding to these aspects linked in memory? Two types of answer to this question have been offered, distinguishing the two dominant schools of memory inquiry during the last half century. The older school, derived from philosophical associationism (see Anderson & Bower, 1973), holds that the different components are linked directly to one another. But the newer school, that of constructivism, originating with Bartlett (1932), holds that the components are grouped by virtue of their common connections to some higher order structure.One way in which to attempt to discriminate between these two types of view is by means of cued recall. In recent years, two different theoretical models-one within each of the schools-have both enjoyed some success in quantitatively predicting the results of experiments of this type. These theories are the "fragment" model (Jones, 1976(Jones, , 1978cJones & Payne, 1982) and the "schema" model (Ross & Bower, 1981a; see also Anderson & Bower, 1973). For ease of exposition, these models are outlined in the following sections in the context of the type of task used in both the present experiments and those of Ross and Bower (l981a).In the experimental task, subjects initially study clusters of four nouns. Subsequently, they receive either one or two words of each cluster as retrieval cues. As a I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions about exposition. Requests for reprints should be sent to Greg...

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