Showing papers on "Fan effect published in 2001"

When knowing more means less: the effect of fan on metamemory judgments.

Abstract: The authors used a "fan" paradigm (J. R. Anderson, 1974) to test the accessibility and competition models of metamemory using judgments of learning (JOLs). JOLs in this study reflect one's confidence level in subsequently recognizing newly learned material. The number of facts, or "fan," associated with JOL-queried concepts varied from 1 to 3 associates. Results of 3 experiments indicated that as the level of fan increased, the magnitude of JOLs decreased. This finding was observed even when the fan effect (i.e., slower recognition as number of facts increase) was attenuated on a verification task in 2 of the experiments by manipulating the organization of the multiple concepts. The results supported the competition hypothesis (T. A. Schreiber, 1998; T. A. Schreiber & D. L. Nelson, 1998) as an important determinant of JOLs.

Fan effects reveal position-specific numerical concepts.

Abstract: We examined associative interference (ie, fan) effects to determine if the numerical concepts mediating numerical fact retrieval can be position specific Participants memorized 15 "diamond arithmetic" facts (eg, 3 diamond 5 = 97; Whalen, 1997) involving five different operands Ignoring operand position (ie, left vs right), each operand appeared equally often across items (ie, position-independent fan was constant) In contrast, position-specific fan values varied across items (eg, 2 appeared five times as the left operand, but once in the right position; 3 appeared four times as the left operand, and twice as the right operand, etc) Thus, we expect a fan effect only if the concepts activated by arithmetic operands are position specific Results indicated that position-specific fan was an excellent predictor of trials to criterion, error rate, and latency The concepts mediating number fact retrieval can be position specific Rickard, Healy, and Bourne (1994; Rickard & Bourne, 1996) proposed an identical-elements model of number-fact memory According to the model, each memorized number fact (eg, 6 x 8 = 48) is represented by a node that consists of the two problem operands (eg, 6 and 8), the answer (eg, 48), and the arithmetic operation to be performed (eg, multiply) A central claim of the model is that problems with identical operands access the same cognitive representation Hence, arithmetic problems that differ only in operand order, commuted pairs such as 6 x 8 and 8 x 6, access the same node The identical-elements model is supported by transfer-of-practice experiments, which show that transfer between identical pairs (eg, 6 x 8 and 6 x 8) is practically equivalent to that between commuted problems (eg, 8 x 6 and 6 x 8) (eg, Campbell, 1999; Rickard & Bourne, 1996) According to the identicalelements model, this is evidence that number-fact representations are order independent One possibility is that arithmetic activation is based on the conceptual identity of numerical operands, regardless of operand order or position The transfer results, however, are also potentially consistent with an order-specific representation For example, with extensive practice, there may be a common, order-specific representation that is accessed equivalently by both orders of a commuted pair (LeFevre & Liu, 1997) Arbuthnott and Campbell (1996) found evidence of order specificity in error priming of simple addition Error priming is the phenomenon that arithmetic errors frequently match the correct answer to a recently practiced problem Arbuthnott and Campbell examined error priming as a function of three match types: (a) the error problem and match problem shared a common operand in the same left-right position (eg, 4 + 8 = 12 priming the error 5 + 8 = 12), (b) the problems shared a common operand not in the same position (8 + 4 = 12 priming 5 + 8 = 12), and (c) the error and match problem did not share a common operand (9 + 3 = 12 priming 5 + 8 = 12) Although all three match types produced error priming relative to expected values, error priming with an operand-position match was significantly greater than the other two match types They argued that such order-specific priming of arithmetic retrieval errors indicates that number-fact retrieval processes or representations are in some way order specific If problem representations are order specific, then it follows that the numerical concepts activated by problems are position or order specific The purpose of the present experiment was to determine if, at least in principle, the numerical concepts mediating arithmetic fact retrieval can be position specific We pursued this by investigating position-specific fan effects in memory for new, arbitrary numerical facts (eg, 3 0 5 = 97) The fan effect is a decrease in memory performance associated with an increase in the number of facts connected to a concept (Anderson & Reder, 1999; Pirolli & Anderson, 1985) …