| Abstract: | Relates order relations to research on retrieval processes and the representation of order information in memory. In 2 experimental tests, presentation of a study string of letters was followed by a test string to which the 6 undergraduate Ss responded "same" or "different." When adjacent letters were switched, RT was long and accuracy low, suggesting that a test letter is not simply compared to the letter in the same position in the study string; rather, the comparison is distributed across positions. The memory model assumes that the representation of a letter is distributed over position and that the comparison process assesses the amount of overlap between the test string and the memory representation. The diffusion retrieval model and overlap memory model are fitted to the data and goodness-of-fit is assessed. Shortcomings of alternative models are considered and applications of the model to related matching tasks, such as D. Taylor's (1976) converse of the perceptual matching task, and Angiolillo-Bent and L. Rips's (1981) multiple-element comparison task, are described. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
