Configural effects in human memory

Barbara Hayes-Roth, Carol Walker

Expert InsightsPublished 1977

The ability to integrate information from diverse texts and to detect logical implications of the integrated information is fundamental to the understanding process. This paper shows that identifying and configuring relevant facts in order to support hypothesized inferences is extremely difficult unless the facts have been committed to memory. Simply reading relevant texts for familiarization and then referring to them as needed provides an inadequate basis for deductive logic. Further, apprehension of the logical configuration of facts underlying a particular inference can be an essentially structured the facts appropriately in memory. A model of search and memory mechanisms is proposed. It accounts for accuracy and reaction time data, as well as individual differences in inference evaluation. The implications of the superiority of memorization over familiarization-plus-referencing as a basis for learning and reasoning are discussed.

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Hayes-Roth, Barbara and Carol Walker, Configural effects in human memory. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1977. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P6061.html.
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