The Fan Effect

The Fan Effect is Anderson's explanation for the brain's ability to optimize memory retrieval by keeping better access to memories that are more likely to be relevant. The effect is a natural extension of the propositional network (see the definition of symbolic representation) Anderson uses to represent concepts in the brain. Concepts with greater probabilistic relevance are connected via conceptual links to other concepts, and the more connections (that is, the greater the fan), the more likely the central concept will be activated.

This effect was proposed with Anderson's ACT* methodology for concept classification as a model for the human brain, and was based on the assumption that the brain uses a spreading activation of concepts in order to do classification. His conclusion is that the associativity of the brain is based on the probabilistic nature of the environment it is exposed to, and that the ability classify is an extension of this; the fan of the network is not the critical factor in classification. This is one of his arguments for the notion that to understand the workings of a cognitive architecture (namely, the human brain), one must look not within the architecture, but at the environment the architecture acts in. This is known as rational analysis.

Assumptions

  1. Information is stored and associated according to the likelihood of association.

Simon strongly discounts this point-of-view in his article titled "Cognitive Architectures: Comment". His argument is essentially one of bounded rationality.

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