Recall test

In cognitive psychology, a recall test is a test of memory in which participants are presented with stimuli and then, after a delay, are asked to remember as many of the stimuli as possible.^[1] Memory performance can be indicated by measuring the percentage of stimuli the participant was able to recall. An example of this would be studying a list of 10 words and later recalling 5 of them. This is a 50 percent recall. Participants' responses also may be analyzed to determine if there is a pattern in the way items are being recalled from memory. For example, if participants are given a list consisting of types of vegetables and types of fruit, their recall can be assessed to determine whether they grouped vegetables together and fruits together. Recall is also involved when a person is asked to recollect life events, such as graduating high school, or to recall facts they have learned, such as the capital of Florida.^[2]

Measuring recall contrasts with measuring recognition, in which people are asked to pick an item that has previously been seen or heard from a number of other items that have not been previously seen or heard, which occurs, for example, during a typical multiple-choice question exam.^[3]

Types of Recall

Free Recall Test

In a free recall test, a participant is simply asked to recall stimuli. These stimuli could be words previously presented by the experimenter or events experienced earlier in the participant's life.^[4]

Cued Recall Test

A cued recall test is a procedure for testing memory in which a participant is presented with cues, such as words or phrases, to aid recall of previously experienced stimuli.^[5] Endel Tulving and Zena Pearlstone (1966) conducted an experiment in which they presented participants with a list of words to be remembered. The words were from specific categories such as birds (pigeon, sparrow), furniture (chair, dresser), and professions (engineer, lawyer). The categories were not made apparent in the original list. Participants in the free recall group were asked to write down as many words as they could remember from the list. Participants in the cued recall group were also asked to recall the words, but this group was provided with the names of the categories, "birds," "furniture," and "professions." The results of Tulving and Pearlstone's experiment demonstrate that retrieval cues aid memory. Participants in the free recall group recalled 40 percent of the words, whereas participants in the cued recall group recalled 75 percent of the words.^[6]

Factors Affecting Recall

Encoding Specificity

The principle of encoding specificity states that we encode information along with its context. The memory utilizes cues from which the information was encoded and from the environment in which it is being retrieved.^[7] An experiment demonstrating encoding specificity was conducted by D. R. Godden and Alan Baddeley (1975) in their "diving experiment." During this experiment, one group of participants studied a list of words underwater while another group of participants studied the same list of words on land. These groups were then divided, so half of the participants in the land and water groups were tested for recall on land and half were tested underwater. The participants demonstrated a better recall when the context of retrieval matched the context of encoding, for example having studied underwater and being tested underwater.^[8]

State-Dependent Learning

This is another example of how matching the conditions at the encoding and retrieval can influence memory.^[9] State-dependent learning is associated with a specific internal state, such as mood or state of awareness. According to the principle of state-dependent learning, memory will be better when a person's internal state during retrieval matches his or her internal state during encoding. Two ways of matching encoding and retrieval include matching the physical situation (encoding specificity) or an internal feeling (state-dependent learning).^[10]

Transfer-Appropriate Processing

The phenomenon of transfer-appropriate processing shows that memory performance is enhanced if the type of task at encoding matches the type of task at retrieval.^[11]

Levels of Processing Theory

The main idea behind the levels of processing theory is that deeper processing leads to better encoding and, therefore, better retrieval.^[12]

References