Taxonomic word categories and memory search

Abstract The question of subject-controlled operations for entry and search of memory is examined in models that assume serial memory search. When words from a single taxonomic category are presented, search is serial and exhaustive. With two-category lists, the search remains serial but is not exhaustive. Instead, search terminates after the category of the test item has been completely searched. Two self-terminating search models for categorized lists, a directed entry and a random entry model, are considered. Slope and variance parameters of the latency data favor the random entry strategy.