Psychology2016

Memory 241

Recall and Recognition

6.7 Differentiate the retrieval processes of recall and recognition.

Why do multiple-choice tests seem so much easier than essay tests?

There are two kinds of retrieval of memories, recall and recognition. It is the difference between
these two retrieval methods that makes some kinds of exams seem harder than others. In
recall, memories are retrieved with few or no external cues, such as filling in the blanks on
an application form. Recognition, on the other hand, involves looking at or hearing infor-
mation and matching it to what is already in memory. A word-search puzzle, in which the
words are already written down in the grid and simply need to be circled, is an example of
recognition. The following section takes a closer look at these two important processes.

RECALL: HMM ... LET ME THINK When someone is asked a question such as “Where
were you born?” the question acts as the cue for retrieval of the answer. This is an exam-
ple of recall, as are essay, short-answer, and fill-in-the-blank tests that are used to mea-
sure a person’s memory for information (Borges et al., 1977; Gillund & Shiffrin, 1984;
Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1992).
Whenever people find themselves struggling for an answer, recall has failed (at
least temporarily). Sometimes the answer seems so very close to the surface of conscious
thought that it feels like it’s “on the tip of the tongue.” (If people could just get their
tongues out there far enough, they could read it.) This is sometimes called the tip of the
tongue (TOT) phenomenon (Brown & McNeill, 1966; Burke et al., 1991). Although people
may be able to say how long the word is or name letters that start or even end the word,
they cannot retrieve the sound or actual spelling of the word to allow it to be pulled into
the auditory “recorder” of STM so that it can be fully retrieved. This particular memory
problem gets more common as we get older, although it should not be taken as a sign of
oncoming dementia unless the increase is sudden (Osshera et al., 2012).
How can a person overcome TOT? The best solution is the one “everyone” seems
to know: Forget about it. When you “forget about it,” the brain apparently continues
to work on retrieval. Sometime later (perhaps when you run across a similar-sounding
word in your surroundings), the word or name will just “pop out.” This can make for
interesting conversations, because when that particular word does “pop out,” it usually
has little to do with the current conversation.
Another interesting feature of recall is that it is often subject to a kind of “prejudice”
of memory retrieval, in which information at the beginning and the end of a list, such as
a poem or song, tends to be remembered more easily and accurately. This is called the
serial position effect (Murdock, 1962).
A good demonstration of this phenomenon involves instructing people to listen to
and try to remember words that are read to them that are spaced about 4 or 5 seconds
apart. People typically use maintenance rehearsal by repeating each word in their heads.
They are then asked to write as many of the words down as they can remember. If the
frequency of recall for each word in the list is graphed, it will nearly always look like the
graph in Figure 6. 6 on the next page. To try this demonstration for yourself, participate in
the Serial Position Effect experiment Simulate the Experiment, Serial Position Effect.
Words at the very beginning of the list tend to be remembered better than those
in the middle of the list. This effect is called the primacy effect and is due to the fact
that the first few words, when the listener has nothing already in STM to interfere with
their rehearsal, will receive far more rehearsal time than the words in the middle, which
are constantly being replaced by the next word on the list (Craik, 1970; Murdock, 1962).
At the end of the graph there is another increase in recall. This is the recency effect;
it is usually attributed to the fact that the last word or two was just heard and is still
in short-term memory for easy retrieval, with no new words entering to push the most

recall

type of memory retrieval in which the

information to be retrieved must be

“pulled” from memory with very few

external cues.

recognition

the ability to match a piece of infor-

mation or a stimulus to a stored image

or fact.

serial position effect

tendency of information at the begin-

ning and end of a body of information

to be remembered more accurately

than information in the middle of the

body of information.

primacy effect

tendency to remember information

at the beginning of a body of informa-

tion better than the information that

follows.

recency effect

tendency to remember information at

the end of a body of information better

than the information that precedes it.