Chapter 7: Memory Retrieval and Forgetting

This set explores memory retrieval processes, contextual influences on recall, and the psychological mechanisms behind episodic and semantic false memories.

Retrieval cues

Stimuli that help gain access to memories stored in long-term memory.

Tip of the tongue phenomenon

A temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by the feeling that it is just out of reach.

Contextual cues

Environmental factors that accompany memories and help facilitate the retrieval of information from long-term storage.

Reinstating events context

The process of facilitating memory retrieval by returning to the scene of a memory or mentally recreating the environment where it occurred.

False memories

A psychological phenomenon where an individual recalls events that did not happen or remembers them differently from how they actually occurred.

Episodic false memories

Events-based false memories often seen in eyewitness testimonies where leading questions can distort recall.

Misinformation effect

An effect that occurs when a person's recall of an event they witnessed is altered by misleading information or the way questions are phrased.

Leading questions

Specific questioning techniques, such as using the action verb "smashed" instead of "hit," that can alter a participant's memory of an event's intensity.

Semantic false memories

A type of false memory based on how information is organized in the semantic space and how we think about the meaning of information.

Decayed memory theory

The theory that information is no longer accessible because it has physically faded or gone away from long-term storage.