COG - Retrieving Lesson

Learning Target:

  • Describe strategies for retrieving memories.

AP psychology course and exam description, effective fall 2020. (n.d.). https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-psychology-course-and-exam-description.pdf

Retrieval

To most of us, memory is the ability to recall information. In psychology, memory is any sign that something has been learned. Retrieval describes how we access, recall, or retrieve stored information. Our ability to retrieve previously stored information depends on retrieval cues (A clue, prompt, or hint that helps trigger the recall of information stored in LTM.). If you have difficulty remembering previously stored information you have what is called retrieval cue failure (The inability to recall previously stored information.).

Recall vs. Recognition

Psychologists like to make a distinction between the two retrieval cues recall and recognition. Recall is when you must retrieve previously stored information from your memory. An example would be writing an FRQ for your AP Psychology course. Recognition is where you must identify a target or solution from several targets or solutions, like the multiple-choice section of your AP exam. The main difference between recall and recognition is that recognition involves a cue, while recall does not. When you take the AP exam in May, you will be tested on recognition before you are tested on recall.

Recognition (as in a multiple choice test) and Recall (as in writing an FRQ)

Retrieval Cues

Retrieval cues are things that help us remember information. They can be a prompt, clue, or hint that helps in the recall of stored memories. Priming is a method in which we activate the strands of information that lead us to memory. An example would be if you have lost your smartphone. You retrace the steps to find where the item may have been lost. Did you last see it when you walked in the door? Did you answer that last text sitting on the couch?

Retrieval cue failure describes the inability to recall long-term memories because of inadequate or missing retrieval cues. One common type of retrieval failure is called the tip-of-the-tongue experience. This describes the inability to retrieve information that you absolutely know is there. TOT experiences are common. On average we have at least one a week. Most are resolved within a few minutes. TOT experiences tell us that memory is more than an all-or-nothing phenomenon and that information is organized and connected.

Déjà vu

Déjà vu is the sense that something you are currently experiencing has happened before. Associations in similar situations can cause a person to feel an event has occurred in the past when it has not. So, if we have previously been in an analogous situation, the current situation is loaded with various cues that unconsciously retrieve that information and experience.

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