Psychological validity of a model of human associative processor (hasp)

This paper discusses the psychological validity of the associative model HASP, which was propsoed by one of the authors. The fan effect and the priming effect are important properties of the retrieval process in human memory. The fan effect is a phenomenon that when the number of items associated with a concept is increased, a longer time is required to select an item from those items. In HASP, one of the multiply matched associative items is selected by the competitive circuit. The fan effect can be ascribed to the delay in the selection due to the increased number of competitions. The priming effect is a phenomenon where the preceding information processing affects the succeeding processing. Depending on the relation between the consecutive information, the effect can be accounted for by the activation of the preceding information left in HASP. It is also shown that the priming effect in the unconscious processing condition, where the cognition of the preceding information is prevented, can also be accounted for. Furthermore, it is shown that the processing in HASP is well matched to the two‐level theory in lexical retrieval, where the semantic selection process for the lexically ambiguous word is composed of the processes of activating all meanings and of selecting the one matched to the context.