ElmCore Journal of Educational Psychology October, 2014 | Page 45

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here have been dismissed or discounted; some aspects
of each have been integrated, broadened or narrowed,
but each has contributed its own part to cognitive
psychology’s development. The first model that
became widely accepted and discussed was the
network model. Collins and his colleagues (i.e.,
Collins & Loftus, 1975; Collins & Quillan, 1969) laid
the groundwork for this model. It assumes that there
are nodes or tabs in memory that store information in
sections much like a notebook filing system. When
stimuli are introduced, this model suggests that the
mind references the incoming data to a chapter or
node in memory. One advantage of this model is that
it accounts for individual differences in its
comprehension and filing system. Each person’s nodes
would be individualized by the experiences and
knowledge that person had gained throughout his or
her lifetime. Because this suggests a hierarchical
system at work in the mind, integration of new
information is shown as a process of moving from
stimulus to tab to separate pieces filed behind the tab,
a very linear progression. This linear progression later
became the center of a bit of controversy and led to
new models as this network system began to meet
with competition.
Smith, Shoben, and Rips (1974) argued
against the network model claiming that instead of
being organized in a hierarchal system, information is
stored as sets of defining characteristics. In other
words, associations are made through the comparison
of overlapping features between new stimuli and
existing characteristics stored in memory, and in doing
this, they differentiated two types of features: defining
and characteristic. Several major failures have been
found in this model, though. First, there is no
allowance here for semantic flexibility, and the world
and our perception of it are filled with semantic
ambiguities that must be mediated. Also, this system
would require vast numbers of collections, but it
suggests no concrete organizational system for these
collections.
The essential difference between these first
two types of encoding and storage systems is related
to bottom-up and top-down processing. Network
models work on the top-down principle; feature
comparison models work from the bottom-up. Klatzky

ElmCore® Journal of Educational Psychology

(1980) recognized the similarities between these
models and essentially tried to end debate about
choosing between them. When she coined the term
“mental dictionary”, she stated simply that their
associations to one another represent concepts. In this
light, it is of no material consequence which direction,
top-down or bottom-up, the information flows and is
connected, it simply matters that associations and
connections are made. This effectively merged the two
ideas saying that feature analysis is simply an
enhanced form of the network model.
Anderson and Bower (1973) proposed the
next significant model for how knowledge units are
stored. Their model was founded on the belief that
knowledge is based on verbal units (consisting of
subject and verb constructs) rather than perceptions.
This prepositional model moved away from
categorization and nodes, but it still held that these
propositions are organized in a network structure.
Another feature that this model shared with the
network and feature analysis models was its serial
nature. This model, as both of the previous models, is
built on the belief that information is encoded in a
linear method; in order for new information to be
incorporated, it must pass from point A to point B to
integration with X. It is the serial nature of these
models that differentiates them from the later models
of information acquisition. Later theories suggest that
information is not incorporated in a linear fashion, but,
rather, they are simultaneously processed at different
levels and by different memory categories or
structures.

Other Theories of Information Processing
There are many, more recent theories concerning
information processing that differ from the stage
theory model, and today, research and study
continues to modify existing beliefs in this area
of cognitive psychology. Despite the fact that
there are commonly accepted pieces, the
complete picture of how information is processed
continues to change.
Levels of processing. One of the first
alternatives to the stage theory was developed by

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