The Evolution

The Evolution

33

According to the theory of spreading activation, if a concept such as
"red" occurs, it should activate "apple" and "fire engine," etc., and
these concepts should in turn activate such concepts as "supermarket"
and "firehose," inasmuch as there is no rule forbidding part-whole
links from initiating a spreading activation.

In contrast, residual activation requires that if a concept such
as "red" occurs, it would not residually activate such concepts as
"apple," and "fire engine," etc., inasmuch as part-whole links are
forbidden to give rise to persisting activations of any kind.

It should be clear from the above comparisons that there is an
overall similarity between the principle of residual activation and
the concept of spreading activation as employed by Collins and Loftus,
as well as certain clearcut differences. This overall similarity will
be discussed in the next section, and attention will then be focused
on the differences between the two theories.

Do Secondary Activations Occur?

It would be a tedious, and somewhat unproductive task to analyze
all of the data that have accumulated supporting the conclusion that
secondary activations of some kind occur. In summary it may be said
that both residual activation theory and spreading activation theory
argue that when a concept is subjected to a secondary activation, mem-
ory's ability to retrieve that concept should be facilitated (i.e. primed)

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