Factors that predict memory recovery

Repeated retrieval attempts

- repeated retrieval attempts typically increase the amount recalled even when the person feels that he or she cannot recall anymore. Ballard: asked young school children to memorize poetry. Would recall new lines of poetry they had failed to recall previously.

Passage of time

- sometimes memory improves with delay even when no effort to retrieve is made. Ivan Pavlov: when a classically conducted salivary response was extinguished, the response gained in strength again after 20 minutes [spontaneous recovery]

Hypermnesia

- the improvement in recall performance arising from repeated testing sessions on the same material. - largest on recall tests

Reminiscence (Ballard)

- the remembering again of the forgotten without learning or a gradual process of improvement in the capacity to revive past experiences.

Mark Wheeler; spontaneous recovery in episodic memory

1. Presented students with 12 pictures: 3 opportunities to study the items. 2. Then they were told practice was over and were given real lists. 2 additional lists of 12 pictures with a free recall test occuring after each. 3. after a third list was presented, students were given a free-recall test for the pictures studied on the first test either immediately or after 30 minutes. 4. recall from first list suffered significant retroactive interference from learning the two other lists compared to the control group who only had one list. 5. but actually after the first 30 minutes, free-recall of the first-list pictures actually got better. Maybe if retroactive interference reflects the persisting effects of inhibition, perhaps forgotten items recover because inhibition is gradually released. ex. traumatic memories

Spontaneous recovery

The term arising from the classical conditioning literature given to the reemergence of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a delay; similarly, forgotten declarative memories have been also observed to recovery over time Significant retroactive interference at short delays but performance on the first list improved at longer delays.

Kleinbard

cumulative recall from 48% first day to 90% How might hypermnesia come about? - visualization and reconstruction - words is not as strong