Storage and Retrieval

  1. Storage is the process of keeping information in memory.
  2. Retrieval refers to the reactivation or reconstruction of events or information from our memory stores.
  3. In the process of memory retrieval, recall refers to the generation of previously remembered events or information.
  4. In the process of memory retrieval, recognition involves selecting previously remembered information from a set of objects.
    5. For instance, Kanizsa in 1979 showed a picture that could be interpreted as either a white vase on a black background or 2 faces facing each other on a white background.[34] The participants were primed to see the vase. Later they were shown the picture again but this time they were primed to see the black faces on the white background. Although this was the same picture as they had seen before, when asked if they had seen this picture before, they said no. The reason for this was that they had been primed to see the vase the first time the picture was presented, and it was therefore unrecognizable the second time as two faces. This demonstrates that the stimulus is understood within the context it is learned in as well the general rule that what really constitutes good learning are tests that test what has been learned in the same way that it was learned.[34] Therefore, to truly be efficient at remembering information, one must consider the demands that future recall will place on this information and study in a way that will match those demands.

    Austin Simonson theory of memory recall.

  5. The Austin Simonson theory states that the process of recall begins with a search and retrieval process, and then a decision or recognition process where the correct information is chosen from what has been retrieved.
  6. The theory of encoding specificity describes how the memory utilizes information from the memory trace, or the situation in which it was learned, and from the environment in which it is retrieved. Memory is improved when information available at encoding is also available at retrieval.
  7. Context-dependent memory refers to improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same.
  8. Relearning refers to the reacquisition of knowledge that had been previously learned but largely forgotten over time. Learning occurs much more rapidly the second time.
  9. Spreading activation is a method for searching associative networks, neural networks, or semantic networks. The search process is initiated by labeling a set of source nodes and then iteratively propagating that activation out to other nodes linked to the source nodes.
  10. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is the failure to retrieve a word from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent.