Remembering things - What is Recognition?
What is Recognition
The second form of remembering is recognition. Ever done a multiple choice exam? That uses recognition.
We realise that something is familiar.
As you know, this is usually easier than recall. Mainly because we don’t have to search for the information. Multiple-choice exams are often easier than short answer or essay exams.
And it seems to last longer too.
Can you imagine trying to name everyone in your graduating high school class?
Nope? All those years with those people and you can’t recall all their names?
I bet you could probably name most of them if I showed you photos of them. That is recognition at work.
Going back to the filing cabinet analogy we spoke about earlier when looking at long-term memory.
If long-term memory is like a filing cabinet, when we recall something, it is like the tab on a folder. You can then use the tab to pull out the whole file.[i]
Conclusion
Recognition is a type of remembering that involves seeing something familiar. It is used when we do multiple choice examples or name someone after seeing their photo. It is easier and last longer than recall. Later on we will look at how to use this to our advantage.
[i] https://blogs.psychcentral.com/always-learning/2010/01/recognition-vs-recall/
Free Recall
The first is called free-recall.
Not because it doesn’t cost anything but because there are no restrictions.
Just try to remember a list and then see how many you can recall in any order.
You do this when you do shopping lists. It doesn’t matter what order you remember the in (unless you love to make your trips to the shops ‘efficient’).
Photo by AnthonyRosenberg/iStock / Getty Images
Conclusion
There are three ways that we can measure how someone ‘remembers’ something. These are recall, recognition and relearning. Recalling is searching you memory and then producing information with it. It is the type of memory used in those exams where you have to write answers to questions.
Next week we will look at recognition