Explicit Memory

Factors Affecting Explicit Memory

Explicit memory is generally measured by one of two types of memory tasks: recognition or recall. Common classroom recognition tasks are multiple-choice and true-false questions; common classroom recall tasks are fill-in-the-blank questions and essays. In general, both recognition and recall are enhanced more by encoding processes that focus on concepts and meaning than they are by encoding processes that focus on perceptual attributes of information. Furthermore, both recognition and recall are affected more by manipulations that influence the amount and type of concept-based processing people perform than by manipulations that influence the amount and type of perceptual processing people perform. Together, these two facts suggest that explicit memory is most effectively enhanced when people attend to the conceptual aspects of information.

A second consideration for understanding explicit memory in the context of education is how information is studied. Two phenomena, the spacing effect and the testing effect, are particularly important. The spacing effect refers to the finding that distributing repetitions of information over time by placing other events in between the repetitions yields considerably better memory performance than repeating the same item twice in succession. The testing effect refers to the finding that people's memory improves most when they interleave memory retrieval attempts with the study of information. Thus, alternating between studying and retrieving produces faster learning of information immediately and dramatically better retention over time compared with repeated study of information with only intermittent retrieval.

Finally, there are differences between recognition and recall retrieval processes. Recognition memory tends to be strongly influenced by the alternatives that are presented along with a correct answer. Thus, if the incorrect alternatives on a recognition memory test are very similar to the correct answer, accurate recognition will require a more precise memory than if the incorrect alternatives are dissimilar to the correct answer. Recall, on the other hand, tends to be thought of as a process whereby a person uses cues he or she is given, such as a question or concept, to search for potential answers in their memory.

One perspective that provides a useful framework for thinking about the process of recall distinguishes between similarities and differences among memories. Similarity among memory traces, such as being from the same conceptual category (e.g., fruits), is useful for searching through memory in an effort to find candidate responses. Once a candidate response is located, it is useful to have information in a memory trace that distinguishes it from other traces that are similar and therefore also possible responses. In essence, difference information helps identify a candidate memory as the exact trace a person was attempting to retrieve.

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