Invitation to Psychology

276 ChaPteR 8 Memory

is say whether it is old or new, or perhaps correct

or incorrect, or pick it out of a set of alternatives.

The task, in other words, is to compare the infor-

mation you are given with the information stored

in your memory. True–false and multiple-choice

tests call for recognition.

Recognition tests can be tricky, especially

when false items closely resemble correct ones.

Under most circumstances, however, recognition

is easier than recall. Recognition for visual images

is particularly impressive. If you show people 2,500

slides of faces and places, and later you ask them

to identify which ones they saw out of a larger set,

they will be able to identify more than 90 percent

of the original slides accurately (Haber, 1970).

The superiority of recognition over recall was

once demonstrated in a study of people’s mem-

ories of their high school classmates (Bahrick,

Bahrick, & Wittlinger, 1975). The participants,

ages 17 to 74, first wrote down the names of as

many classmates as they could remember. Recall

was poor; even when prompted with yearbook pic-

tures, the youngest people failed to name almost a

third of their classmates, and the oldest failed to

name most of them. Recognition, however, was

far better. When the participants were asked to

look at a series of cards, each of which contained

a set of five photographs, and were asked to say

which picture in each set showed a former class-

mate, recent graduates were right 90  percent of

Recite & Review

Recite: Here’s a suggestion: Tell someone—anyone—out loud what you remember about the

influence of misleading information on people’s reports of an event, and about conditions that

increase suggestibility in children.

Review: Next, go back and read this section again.

Now take this Quick Quiz:

1. True or false: Mistaken identifications are more likely when a suspect’s ethnicity differs from
   that of the eyewitness, even when the witness feels certain about being accurate.


2. Research suggests that the best way to encourage truthful testimony by children is to (a)
   reassure them that their friends have had the same experience, (b) reward them for saying that
   something happened, (c) scold them if you believe they are lying, (d) avoid leading questions.


3. Some years back, hundreds of people in psychotherapy began claiming that they could recall
   long-buried memories of having taken part in satanic rituals involving animal and human torture
   and sacrifice. Yet the FBI was unable to confirm any of these reports. Based on what you have
   learned so far, how might you explain such “memories”?
   Answers:

Study and Review at MyPsychLab

Therapists who uncritically assumed that satanic cults were widespread may have asked leading questions and 3. d2. true1.

• otherwise influenced their patients. Patients who were susceptible to their therapists’ interpretations may then have confabu

lated and “remembered” experiences that did not happen, borrowing details from fictionalized accounts or from other troubling

experiences in their lives. The result was source misattribution and the patients’ mistaken conviction that their memories

were real.

You are about to learn...

•    why multiple-choice test items are generally

easier than short-answer or essay questions.

•    whether you can know something without

knowing that you know it.

•    why the computer is often used as a metaphor

for the mind.

In Pursuit of Memory

Now that we have seen how memory doesn’t

work—namely, like an infallible recording of ev-

erything that happens to you—we turn to studies

of how it does work.

Measuring Memory LO 8.5, LO 8.6

Conscious, intentional recollection of an event or

an item of information is called explicit memory.

It is usually measured using one of two methods.

The first method tests for recall, the ability to

retrieve and reproduce information encountered

previously. Essay and fill-in-the-blank exams

require recall. The second method tests for recog-

nition, the ability to identify information you have

previously observed, read, or heard about. The

information is given to you, and all you have to do

explicit memory
Conscious, intentional
recollection of an event or
of an item of information.

recall The ability to
retrieve and reproduce
from memory previously
encountered material.

recognition The ability
to identify previously en-
countered material.