The Process of Retrieval from Very Long Term Memory

Abstract
Subjects were asked to think aloud while attempting to recall the names of their high school classmates of from 4 to 19 years past. Yearbooks of each subject's graduating class were available to verify the accuracy of subject recalls. The retrievals were characterized by overshoot, systematic hypothesizing, fabrications, the establishment of search contexts, self corrections, and the use of a number of basic search strategies. Several subjects were still retrieving new names after 10 hours at the task. These phenomena, as well as an array of traditional memory phenomena, can be understood from an information processing analysis which is based on interpreting retrieval as a problem solving process. The characterization of retrieval which results is that of a reconstructive process. Information about the target item is used to construct a description of some aspect of the item. The description is used to recover a fragment of information about the item which is added to what is known. From this information a new description can be formed to retrieve still more information, until the particular piece of information sought can be recovered. The characterization identifies three subprocesses: FIND A CONTEXT, in which a proper environment for conducting a search is recovered, SEARCH, in which bits and pieces of information appropriate to the context are recovered until an adequate description can be formed within the search context, and VERIFY, in which the record recovered is checked to confirm that it is about the target item. Each of the three stages has embedded within one or more recursive calls to the retrieval process.

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