ABSTRACT

In this chapter we discuss a localist, connectionist implementation of the primacy model of immediate serial recall (Norris, Page, & Baddeley, 1994, 1995; Page & Norris, 1996). In our earlier papers, we preferred to avoid specifying a detailed connectionist implementation of our model because we believed that such detail might draw attention away from the general principles underlying the model’s operation. Nonetheless, our model was framed using terms such as activation and noise, consonant with our stated view that the model had potential for being implemented as a connectionist model in many simple ways. In what follows, we go further than we have done previously by suggesting an implementation unusual among models in the area, in that its memory component is activation based rather than association based. We also seek to make links between components of our model and localist models of speech production.