ABSTRACT
Spreading activation can be considered the canonical model of semantic priming. It was first incorporated into a model of memory by Quillian (1967); this model was elaborated and extended by Collins and Loftus (1975). Spreading activation models also were proposed by Anderson (Anderson, 1976, 1983a, 1993), and spreading activation mechanisms were discussed by Posner and Snyder (1975a). Although these models differ in several important ways, they share three fundamental assumptions: (a) retrieving an item from memory amounts to activating its internal representation, (b) activation spreads from a concept to related concepts, and (c) residual activation accumulating at concepts facilitates their subsequent retrieval. For example, the visual presentation of word, such as lion, activates its internal representation. This activation spreads to related concepts, such as tiger. If the word tiger appears soon after the word lion, it can be identified more quickly than normally because it is already partially activated.
