So you have worked hard to encode (via effortful processing) and store some important information for your upcoming final exam. How do you get that information back out of storage when you need it?
retrieval
The act of getting information out of memory storage and back into conscious awareness is known as retrieval.
This would be similar to finding and opening a paper you had previously saved on your computer’s hard drive. Now it’s back on your desktop, and you can work with it again. Our ability to retrieve information from long-term memory is vital to our everyday functioning. You must be able to retrieve information from memory in order to do everything from knowing how to brush your hair and teeth, to driving to work, to knowing how to perform your job once you get there.
Psychologists distinguish information that is available in memory from that which is accessible (Tulving & Pearlstone, 1966).
available vs. accessible information
Available information is the information that is stored in memory—but precisely how much and what types are stored cannot be known. That is, all we can know is what information we can retrieve—accessible information. The assumption is that accessible information represents only a tiny slice of the information available in our brains.
Most of us have had the experience of trying to remember some fact or event, giving up, and then—all of a sudden!—it comes to us at a later time, even after we’ve stopped trying to remember it. Similarly, we all know the experience of failing to recall a fact, but then, if we are given several choices (as in a multiple-choice test), we are easily able to recognize it.
Types of Retrieval
There are three ways you can retrieve information out of your long-term memory storage system: recall, recognition, and relearning.
recall
Recall is what we most often think about when we talk about memory retrieval: it means you can access information without cues. For example, you would use recall for an essay test.
recognition
Recognition happens when you identify information that you have previously learned after encountering it again. It involves a process of comparison. When you take a multiple-choice test, you are relying on recognition to help you choose the correct answer.
Here is another example. Let’s say you graduated from high school 10 years ago, and you have returned to your hometown for your 10-year reunion. You may not be able to recall all of your classmates, but you recognize many of them based on their yearbook photos.
relearning
The third form of retrieval is relearning, and it’s just what it sounds like. It involves learning information that you previously learned.
Imagine that you took Spanish in high school, but after high school you did not have the opportunity to speak Spanish. Ten years later, you are asked by your company to work in their Mexico City office. In order to prepare yourself, you enroll in a Spanish course and are surprised at how quickly you are able to pick up the language after not speaking it for 10 years; this is an example of relearning.
Memory Cues
What helps us pull information from memory? A key element is the presence of hints, or cues, in our surroundings. Think of a song that brings back a rush of old memories the moment you hear it.
This phenomenon is governed by the encoding specificity principle: the manner in which we store information influences how we retrieve it. If a song is associated with a particular experience (like a memorable party), hearing it years later can trigger that memory. In an experiment, participants remembered words better when tested in the same location where they learned them, indicating that physical context can serve as a retrieval cue. Closely related to this concept are other types of situational-related memory cues, including:
- context-dependent memory: it’s easier to retrieve certain memories when the conditions present at the time of encoding are replicated. For example, if you learned information in a quiet room, you might remember it better when you’re again in a quiet room. This is because the context (a quiet room) is acting as a cue that helps bring the memory to the surface.
- state-dependent memory: people’s ability to recall specific information can be influenced by their physical or mental state at the time the memory was encoded. In other words, memory can be better retrieved when a person is in the same state of consciousness (drowsy, alert, intoxicated, etc.) as they were when the memory was formed.
- mood-congruent memory: suggests that people are more likely to remember information that is consistent with their current mood. If someone is feeling particularly happy, they might find it easier to recall other happy memories. Conversely, if someone is feeling sad, they may more readily recall sad or negative memories. This doesn’t mean that people can’t remember happy memories when they’re sad or vice versa, but research suggests that our current mood can influence the type of memories that come to mind most easily.
But there’s a catch about encoding specificity and dependent memories: if a cue is linked to too many memories, it loses its effectiveness. For instance, if you memorize a list of words and a single image of a penguin, the cue “recall the image” will help you remember the penguin. But if you mix 25 images into a 100-word list, the same cue won’t be as useful. This phenomenon, known as the cue overload principle, shows the importance of distinctiveness in memory retrieval.
Finstance, consider the task of recognizing famous authors’ surnames. Even if the actual surname is the cue, it may not always lead to correct recognition. You might not identify “Shaw” and “Lee” as famous authors, but you could recall them later when given their first names as cues.
This leads to an interesting situation where recall can sometimes work better than recognition. This happens due to the encoding specificity principle. The cue “George Bernard _____” matches better with how you’ve stored the memory of the author compared to just the surname “Shaw”. However, a common cue like “William” may not evoke “Shakespeare” due to the cue overload principle, since it’s linked with many other famous Williams.
This phenomenon, called the recognition failure of recallable words, illustrates that the effectiveness of a cue depends on how the information was initially encoded. The most effective cues recreate the memory event. Sometimes, the actual memory target (like the surname “Shaw”) is not the best cue. The success of recall depends on how the information was stored in the first place.