Recognition Memory

Recognition memory is a subcategory of declarative memory Essentially, recognition memory is the ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people. When the previously experienced event is reexperienced, this environmental content is matched to stored memory representations, eliciting matching signals.

Recognition memory can be subdivided into two component processes: recollection and familiarity, sometimes referred to as "remembering" and "knowing", respectively. Recollection is the retrieval of details associated with the previously experienced event. In contrast, familiarity is the feeling that the event was previously experienced, without recollection. Thus, the fundamental distinction between the two processes is that recollection is a slow, controlled search process, whereas familiarity is a fast, automatic process.

Mandler's "Butcher-on-the-bus" example:

Imagine taking a seat on a crowded bus. You look to your left and notice a man. Immediately, you are overcome with this sense that you've seen this man before, but you cannot remember who he is. This automatically elicited feeling is familiarity. While trying to remember who this man is, you begin retrieving specific details about your previous encounter. For example, you might remember that this man handed you a fine chop of meat in the grocery store. Or perhaps you remember him wearing an apron. This search process is recollection.

Read more about Recognition Memory:  Historical Overview, Neural Underpinnings, Applications

Famous quotes containing the words recognition and/or memory:

    In a cabinet of natural history, we become sensible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy in regard to the most unwieldy and eccentric forms of beast, fish, and insect.
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    Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)