Q.A student cannot recall, on her own, the name of the scientist who proposed the Levels of Processing view, but as soon as she is shown a list of four names including 'Craik and Lockhart' and asked to pick the correct one, she identifies it correctly and confidently. Explain this difference using the concept of recall versus recognition as methods of measuring memory.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →This difference is explained by the distinction between free recall and recognition, two methods used to measure memory for facts, which place very different demands on the same underlying stored information.
In free recall, a person must generate the required information entirely on their own, with no external prompts or options to choose from — this is exactly what the student was first asked to do when asked to name the scientist unaided. Free recall is a demanding task because the person's memory system has to search for and produce the correct answer with no external support, and this kind of unaided search can fail even when the underlying information is genuinely stored in memory.
In recognition, by contrast, the person is shown the correct item mixed together with 'distracter' items and simply has to identify which one they had learned earlier — this is exactly what happened when the student was shown a list of four names and asked to pick the correct one. Recognition is a comparatively easier task than free recall because the correct answer is already present among the options; the person's memory only needs to produce a sense of familiarity or correctness when the right item is encountered, rather than generate it from nothing. …
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