{"pk":31767,"title":"Recency and Context: An Environmental Analysis of Memory","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Central to the rational analysis of m e m o r y is the\nproposal that memory's sensitivity to statistical\nstructure in the environment enables it to\noptimally estimate the odds that a m e m o r y trace\nwill be needed n o w (Anderson, 1990). These\nodds are based on (1) the pattern of prior use of\nthe m e m o r y (e.g., h o w recently it has been\nneeded) and (2) the similarity of the current\ncontext to the previous contexts in which it has\nbeen needed. W e have analyzed three sources of\ninformational demand in the environment: (1)\nspeech to children; (2) word usage in front page\nheadlines; and (3) the daily distribution of\nauthors of electronic mail. W e found that the\nfactors that govern m e m o r y performance,\nincluding recency, also predict the odds that an\nitem (e.g., a word or author) will be encountered\nnow. Here w e tested a basic prediction the theory\nmakes about the independence between context\nand recency in the environment by extending our\nprevious analysis of recency in the N e w York\nTimes. Though the results of four behavioral\nexperiment were inconsistent with this\nindependence assumption, the combination of\nthe rational and environmental analyses were able\nto account for 9 4 % of the variance in these\nexperiments.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Submitted Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4z93w17v","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Lael","middle_name":"J.","last_name":"Schooler","name_suffix":"","institution":"Carnegie Mellon","department":""},{"first_name":"John","middle_name":"R.","last_name":"Anderson","name_suffix":"","institution":"Carnegie Mellon","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"1993-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/31767/galley/22835/download/"}]}