ABSTRACT
The SAM (Search of Associative Memory) model was originally developed as a model for free and cued recall during the beginning of 1978. After the initial simulations of a number of standard findings in free recall had shown that the model performed reasonably well (see Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1980), the model was applied to the part-list cuing effect, an intriguing finding that was a real puzzle at that time (and perhaps still is, see Nickerson, 1984). This effect refers to the phenomenon in a free recall paradigm that presenting some of the list items as cues for recall does not help subjects in improving their retrieval of the remaining items (the “targets”). This paradigm was devised by Slamecka (1968) as a test of the general assumption that memory is associative and that such associations should aid the retrieval of associated items from memory. Thus, it was assumed that the retrieval of the list items from memory should be facilitated when subjects are given some of them as cues. Hence, the finding that no positive effect was obtained and that often the cues even seemed to have a slight effect was a real puzzle.
