Spreading activation

As it relates to cognitive psychology, spreading activation is the theory of how the brain iterates through a network of associated ideas to retrieve specific information.

The spreading activation theory presents the array of concepts within our memory as cognitive units, each consisting of a node and its associated elements or characteristics, all connected together by edges.

[4] A spreading activation network can be represented schematically, in a sort of web diagram with shorter lines between two nodes meaning the ideas are more closely related and will typically be associated more quickly to the original concept.

The activation of pathways in the network has everything to do with how closely linked two concepts are by meaning, as well as how a subject is primed.

A directed graph is populated by Nodes[ 1...N ] each having an associated activation value A [ i ] which is a real number in the range [0.0 ... 1.0].

In this example, spreading activation originated at node 1 which has an initial activation value of 1.0 (100%). Each link has the same weight value of 0.9. The decay factor was 0.85. Four cycles of spreading activation have occurred. Color hue and saturation indicate different activation values.