%0 Journal Article
%T A Diffusive-Particle Theory of Free Recall
%A Francesco Fumarola
%J Archive of "Advances in Cognitive Psychology".
%D 2017
%R 10.5709/acp-0220-4
%X Diffusive models of free recall have been recently introduced in the memory literature, but their potential remains largely unexplored. In this paper, a diffusive model of short-term verbal memory is considered, in which the psychological state of the subject is encoded as the instantaneous position of a particle diffusing over a semantic graph. The model is particularly suitable for studying the dependence of free-recall observables on the semantic properties of the words to be recalled. Besides predicting some well-known experimental features (forward asymmetry, semantic clustering, word-length effect), a novel prediction is obtained on the relationship between the contiguity effect and the syllabic length of words; shorter words, by way of their wider semantic range, are predicted to be characterized by stronger forward contiguity. A fresh analysis of archival free-recall data allows to confirm this prediction
%K cognition
%K neurosemantics
%K experimental semantics
%K episodic/short-term memory
%K free recall
%K psycho-linguistics
%K neurolinguistics
%U https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5655394/