Memory retrieval and suppression: The inhibition of situation models

When people retrieve newly learned facts on a recognition test, they are of ten increasingly slowed by the number of other newly learned facts that hav e a concept in common with the probed fact. This is called the fan effect. Assuming that people are using situation models of the learned information, the author considers whether the inhibition of competing representations i s one of the processes involved in the fan effect. Evidence was found for n egative priming of related but irrelevant situation models, thus supporting the idea that the inhibition of highly related memory traces is used in lo ng-term memory retrieval. As such, this is a form of retrieval-based inhibi tion.