A Spreading-Activation Theory of Semantic Processing

Allan M. Collins, Elizabeth F. Loftus · Psychological Review · 1975 · cognitive-psychology · 10.1037/0033-295X.82.6.407 · record collins-loftus1975-spreading-activation
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית

Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (corpus-body); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. This is a theory paper with no new data; method = 'review' is the closest fit in the controlled list, and the method_evidence quote is the paper's own statement of its review structure. Claim type is 'mechanism' rather than 'critique' even though a substantial section attacks Smith et al. - the positive contribution is the spreading-activation account of why retrieval and priming effects take the form they do; the critique component is captured in claim_relations. Cross-corpus note: Srull & Wyer (1979), also in this corpus, explicitly cites this paper and argues its spreading-activation account is less appropriate for social stimuli than an interference account, which is why that record carries a 'contradicts' relation pointing here. replicat 2026-08-15, 2026-08-19 and 2026-08-26 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.

This record’s own method is review, and the tags below follow from that. A review’s findings, quantities and statistics are things stated IN this paper, and some of them report results obtained elsewhere. No tag on this page names a different author. Measured across every review in this corpus, 81% of a review’s tags carry no citation at all — most of them are the review speaking. The corpus does not adjudicate the rest: read an unmarked tag as a claim this paper makes, not necessarily one it made first.

How to read this page. The article itself is not reproduced here — this paper is not cleared for redistribution, so what follows is the tag layer alone. The evidence sentences are withheld with the article. The table at the foot lists every tag the record carries; each row names the facet it belongs to, and the whose words column says whether the tag records the paper's own wording or the tagger's sentence about the paper. Every tag links to each other paper in the corpus carrying it. The machine-readable edition of the same thing is the TEI file beside this one, where the tags live in standOff, and the article is at its publisher via the link below. When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.

Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
concept 9 fields · semantic memory 4 fields · priming 2 fields

Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 5 concept tags on this paper, 4 are grounded in a quoted sentence. 3 carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.

spreading activation semantic network priming concept nodes intersection concept activation semantic memory retrieval Bayesian review

Legend

relation to other work	`claim_relations`	how this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim type	`claim_type`	the shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edge	`concept_edges`	an asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
concept	`concepts`	an idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tag	`content_tags`	a finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
limitation	`limitations`	what the paper says its evidence cannot support
method	`method`	how the paper produced its evidence
phenomenon	`phenomenon`	the effect or regularity under study
sense	`senses`	a distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it

The paper

The full text is not reproduced here. This article is not cleared for redistribution, so the page carries the tag layer only. Its evidence sentences are withheld; the grounding status remains with each tag, and the article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.82.6.407. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

Every tag on this page

claim_relations 3 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 2 · concepts 4 · content_tags 3 · limitations 4 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 5

Relations on this page carry a quotation for the claim. Where a relation was separately evidenced — and so tested against the vocabulary for its type — the row says so; none of 2 relations here carry that mark. The rest are the tagger’s reading of the sentence quoted beside them.

This record holds no controls or mechanisms. A layer is empty when the tagger recorded nothing in it — which is not the same as the paper having nothing to record.

facet	tag	field	conf.	whose words
claim_type	mechanism Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_type`		the paper's words
phenomenon	semantic memory retrieval and semantic priming Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`phenomenon`		the paper's words
method	review Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: review	`method`		the paper's words
limitations	The authors flag that their elaboration of Quillian's theory may itself be wrong. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[0]`		the tagger's words
limitations	They do not weigh alternative explanations of the experiments they reinterpret. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[1]`		the tagger's words
limitations	The set of evidence types postulated is not exhaustive. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[2]`		the tagger's words
limitations	As a computational prescription the theory omits many decision-strategy details. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[3]`		the tagger's words
concepts	spreading activation Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: spreading activation	`concepts[0]`		the paper's words
concepts	priming Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: priming	`concepts[2]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	concept nodes Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: concept nodes	`concepts[3]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	intersection Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: intersection	`concepts[4]`	0.95	the paper's words
senses	THE SENTENCE THE PRIMING LITERATURE IS BUILT ON: `Quotation withheld.` Every semantic-priming record in this corpus argues about, extends or tests this - and the parenthetical `(or priming)` is the term arriving inside the theory that would carry it. The corpus now holds the model itself and not only the papers that assume it Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[0]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	AND THE ORIGIN NOTE, WHICH IS THE MOST USEFUL SENTENCE HERE FOR A PROJECT LOOKING AT LLMs: `Quotation withheld.` Quillian wanted to implement it. A computational proposal became the field's psychological explanation, and the paper that completed the conversion says so in its second paragraph. The traffic between computation and psychology has run both ways here since 1962, and this record marks the turn Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[1]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	AND SEARCH IS DEFINED AS TWO WAVEFRONTS MEETING: `Quotation withheld.` Not a lookup and not a strength comparison - a geometry. That is what makes semantic DISTANCE meaningful in this model and why the whole downstream literature measures relatedness in path terms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[2]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	AND THE MODEL PAYS FOR ITS OWN GENEROSITY, WHICH IS WHAT MAKES IT TESTABLE: `Quotation withheld.` A conservation constraint, derived from two numbered assumptions rather than added to fit a result. It predicts that priming cannot scale freely - a cost an unconstrained associative account does not carry, and a prediction later work can collect Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[3]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	`semantic relatedness` vs `semantic distance` - DISTINGUISHED HERE AND CONFLATED IN THE FIELD, in one sentence: `a slightly different notion ... though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably`. The paper draws the distinction and reports that its field does not keep it. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[4]`	0.95	the tagger's words
claim_relations	extends → Quillian's (1966, 1969) spreading-activation theory of semantic memory Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[0]`		the tagger's words
claim_relations	contradicts → the Smith, Shoben and Rips (1974) feature-comparison model Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. differs in: THE AXIS IS WHETHER ALL JUDGEMENTS USE ONE MECHANISM. The span names it as a 'fundamental disagreement' and states both sides in one clause: 'Quotation withheld, including superordinate links.' Feature-comparison as the sole route, against evidence of any available kind.	`claim_relations[1]`		the tagger's words
claim_relations	contradicts → Conrad's (1972) argument that the Collins and Quillian (1969) results are confounded by property frequency Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[2]`		the tagger's words
concept_edges	spreading activation —causes→ priming Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. direction on the measure: increases · strength of the relation: 0.95 · note: THE FOUNDATIONAL EDGE OF THIS CORPUS'S SUBJECT. Activation spreads from the primed concept's node and the effects of priming follow. Weight 0.95: it is the theory's own statement of its own mechanism, in the paper that established it, cited 5,530 times. Note the verb is 'explained' - this is a proposed mechanism, not a measurement, and everything measurable about it is downstream. The corpus holds the measurements elsewhere; this is where they get their meaning. also in: spreading activation · priming	`concept_edges[0]`	0.95	the tagger's words
concept_edges	concept nodes —causes→ intersection Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. direction on the measure: increases · strength of the relation: 0.9 · note: SEARCH AS A GEOMETRY: two wavefronts, and the search ends where they meet. The edge records that intersections are PRODUCED by activation spreading from multiple nodes rather than being looked up. Weight 0.9 rather than 0.95 - the quote is Collins and Loftus reporting Quillian's original formulation, and their own paper then adds the threshold that makes an intersection cost something (fourth concept). Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its span and kept, but the span describes search spreading from concept nodes until an intersection is found; causes is loose. also in: concept nodes · intersection	`concept_edges[1]`	0.95	the tagger's words
content_tags	A concept is a node in a network, with its properties represented as labeled relational links to other concept nodes. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	spreading activation Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. about this quote: QUOTE RECOVERED FROM THE PAPER'S OWN CHARACTERS. The recorded quote was LETTERS-ONLY IDENTICAL to this stretch of the staged text but not an exact substring of it - spaces, hyphens, ligature glyphs or mathematical operators differed, so it could never anchor. This is the file's own text between the same two letters: not produced by a rule about the damage, copied out of the file. Round-trip checked (the recovered span is letters-only equal to the original) and length-checked. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted. also in: spreading activation	`content_tags.definitions[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Bayesian Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. about this quote: QUOTE RECOVERED FROM THE PAPER'S OWN CHARACTERS. The recorded quote was LETTERS-ONLY IDENTICAL to this stretch of the staged text but not an exact substring of it - spaces, hyphens, ligature glyphs or mathematical operators differed, so it could never anchor. This is the file's own text between the same two letters: not produced by a rule about the damage, copied out of the file. Round-trip checked (the recovered span is letters-only equal to the original) and length-checked. The text as originally recorded is kept in evidence as extracted. also in: Bayesian	`content_tags.statistics[0]`		the tagger's words

Interpretive choices

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