entity, but an abstraction of unknown lower-level processes, the spreadingactivation model has predictive but not explanatory power. We provide one explanation of the fan effect by showing that distributed neuronal memory networks (specifically, Hopfield networks) reproduce four qualitative aspects of the fan effect: faster recognition of sentences containing lower-fan words, faster recognition of sentences when more cues are provided, faster acceptance of studied sentences than rejection of probes, and faster recognition of sentences studied more frequently. These are all a natural result of the dynamics of distributed associative memory.