Rapid recovery of accessibility: Primary research in support of a connectionist model of person memory
Abstract
Two experiments are described testing whether priming a construct at one Point of time makes it easier to again increase the accessibility of that construct at a later point in time, even after the accessibility has returned to baseline. This hypothesis, termed the rapid recovery of accessibility, was generated from Smith and DeCoster's (1998) connectionist model of person memory. Other theories of accessibility have difficulty accounting for such an effect, so these experiments constitute an appropriate test of Smith and DeCoster's Model. Experiment 1, using attitude accessibility, failed to find evidence of the rapid recovery of accessibility after either a one-week or six-week delay. Experiment 2, however, found that trait prunes were more effective if the traits had also been primed six-weeks earlier.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Smith, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Social psychology|Cognitive therapy
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