Sources — Spreading Activation
Primary references supporting the historical foundations, formal structures, and related structural perspectives associated with spreading activation.
Historical Foundations
Retrieval Time from Semantic Memory (1969)
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(69)80069-1
A Spreading-Activation Theory of Semantic Processing (1975)
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.82.6.407
The Architecture of Cognition (1983)
https://archive.org/details/architectureofco00ande
Formal Structures
A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specifications (1993)
https://doi.org/10.1006/knac.1993.1008
Related Structural Perspectives
A Mathematical Theory of Communication (1948)
https://archive.org/details/bstj27-4-623
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)
https://archive.org/details/cyberneticsorcon00wien
General System Theory (1968)
https://archive.org/details/generalsystemthe0000bert_f7s2
Structural Interpretation
The historical origins of spreading activation emerged from semantic memory research, semantic network theory, and activation-based cognitive models.
The propagation pattern described by the model appears across a broader range of interconnected systems in which activation, signals, influence, relevance, or state changes move through relationships.
This reference focuses on the structural properties of activation propagation rather than any specific implementation domain.
Historical origin and structural reach should not be treated as equivalent concepts. The sources above distinguish between the origin of the concept and broader structural patterns that may exhibit comparable propagation dynamics.