Judgments of frequency and recency in a distributed memory model

TODAM is a theory of distributed associative memory based on the convolution-correlation formalism of A. Borsellino and T. Poggio (1973, Kybernetik. 122. 113-122), and TODAM2 is a revised version which includes context. auto-associations for binding, a dual basis for item information. and mediators for associative information. It can explain some complex interactions (differential forgetting and differential attention) between item and associative information. In this paper we derive the basic expressions for the memory-probe dot product for the 2 x 2 cases (item and pair study crossed with item and pair probe), and then we apply these expressions to judgments of frequency (JOF) and judgments of recency (JOR). We report an experiment which tests both JOF and JOR for single items with post-cuing to control for encoding strategies and suggest an attenuation factor for repetition to improve the fits. With attenuation. TODAM2 can fit the JOR data. but the JOF Fits, while not too bad, consistently predict too much dependence between item and associative information. (C) 2001 Academic Press.