question: why is it easier to recognise things that we know than recalling them?
comment: If you're given a list of names to choose from, and one is correct, you can basically do process of elimination to get rid of any you don't recognize, and any you *do* recognize, but you know aren't the right name. The flip side of that is similar in process. Your brain says "do I recognize this thing?" So you'll know if you recognize it, or if it's new. To recall a name on your own, your brain has to make an extra connection from the face to the name. If you have a list to choose from, that extra connection is done for you. Some connections are stronger than others, so it might be easier to recall one detail over another. For example, think of an actor/actress you've only seen in one or two roles. I bet you can remember their character's name easier than their real name. Now think of a super famous actor/actress who has been in films for like 15+ years. I bet you can remember their real name better than the name of the characters they played. In this scenario, you've had more opportunities to make connections to their real name than the name of one specific character.
passages: Levels of processing have been an integral part of learning about memory. The self-reference effect describes the greater recall capacity for a particular stimulus if it is related semantically to the subject. This can be thought of as a corollary of the familiarity modifier, because stimuli specifically related to an event in a person's life will have widespread activation in that person's semantic network. For example, the recall value of a personality trait adjective is higher when subjects are asked whether the trait adjective applies to them than when asked whether trait adjective has a meaning similar to another trait.
   Lateral parietal cortex damage (either dextral or sinistral) impairs performance on recognition memory tasks, but does not affect source memories. What is remembered is more likely to be of the 'familiar', or 'know' type, rather than 'recollect' or 'remember', indicating that damage to the parietal cortex impairs the conscious experience of memory.
   Remember and know responses are quite often differentiated by their functional correlates in specific areas in the brain. For instance, during "remember" situations it is found that there is greater EEG activity than "knowing", specifically, due to an interaction between frontal and posterior regions of the brain. It is also found that the hippocampus is differently activated during recall of "remembered" (vs. familiar) stimuli. On the other hand, items that are only "known", or seem familiar, are associated with activity in the rhinal cortex.
  
  Section::::Origins.
   Items which are generated by a person receive more remember responses than items which are read, seen, or heard by a person. In addition, the generation of images to words enhances remember responses. In one study, all participants were asked to study a list of 24 common pairs of opposites, 12 had to be generated and 12 were read. The generated pairs required participants to generate them in the context of a given rule. The recognition test consisted of 48 words, 24 targets and 24 distractors. Participants were asked if items were old or new; if participants replied "old", they were then asked whether they remembered (could recollect contextual details of when it was studied) the pair or if they knew (recognized it but recollection was absent) the pair. Generation effects were seen in remember responses; items which were generated received more remember responses than read items. However, generation effects were not seen in know responses.
   The primacy effect is related to enhanced remembering. In a study, a free recall test was conducted on some lists of words and no test on other lists of words prior to a recognition test. They found that testing led to positive recency effects for remembered items; on the other hand, with no prior test, negative recency effects occurred for remembered items. Thus, both primary and recency effects can be seen in remember responses.
  
  Section::::Influences on remembering and knowing.:Factors that influence know responses but not remember responses are.
   Self-reference effect
  
  The self-reference effect is a tendency for people to encode information differently depending on the level on which they are implicated in the information. When people are asked to remember information when it is related in some way to themselves, the recall rate can be improved.
  
  Section::::Research.
   Section::::Influences on remembering and knowing.:Factors that influence know responses but not remember responses are.:Masked recognition priming.
  
  Masked recognition priming is a manipulation which is known to increase perceptual fluency. Since know responses increase with increased fluency of processing, masked recognition priming enhances know responses.
  
  Section::::Influences on remembering and knowing.:Factors that influence know responses but not remember responses are.:Repetition priming.
   Section::::Phenomena.:The Face Advantage.
   A new hypothesis explains a greater range of parietal lobe lesion findings by proposing that the role of the parietal lobe is in the subjective experience of vividness and confidence in memories. This hypothesis is supported by findings that lesions on the parietal lobe cause the perception that memories lack vividness, and give patients the feeling that their confidence in their memories is compromised.
   Section::::Causes.:Neurological causes.
  
  Section::::Causes.:Neurological causes.:Neurological basis of false recognition.
   Section::::Results of von Restorff's studies.
  
  Participants obtained better recall of the isolated materials on the list than they did the homogeneous items. When an isolated item appeared earlier in the list of items, perceptual salience, or information that is the focus on one's attention, was not necessary for creating the isolation effect.
   Remembering (recollection) accesses memory for separate contextual details (e.g. screen location and font size); i.e. involves retrieval of a particular context configuration.
  
  Section::::Testing methods and models.:Signal detection model.
   Episodic and semantic memory give rise to two different states of consciousness, autonoetic and noetic, which influence two kinds of subjective experience, remembering and knowing, respectively. Autonoetic consciousness refers to the ability of recovering the episode in which an item originally occurred. In noetic consciousness, an item is familiar but the episode in which it was first encountered is absent and cannot be recollected. Remembering involves retrieval from episodic memory and knowing involves retrieval from semantic memory.
   Misattribution is likely to occur when individuals are unable to monitor and control the influence of their attitudes, toward their judgments, at the time of retrieval. Thus, memory is adapted to retain information that is most likely to be needed in the environment in which it operates. Therefore, any misattribution observed is likely to be a reflection of current attitudes.
   Another application on the social advantage in selective memory is with reproduction. Testing female undergraduate students in recall found that in a short video with a male introducing themselves and being considered for a future partner, participants selectively remembered more of what he said than what he looked like. This is supporting of the notion that the purpose of evolution is to pass on genetic information and that selective retention plays a part in that. Seitz, Polack, and Miller (2018) also found that memory performance increased when stimulated by reproductive cues. In an evolutionary perspective, the organization of the semantic memory may link and connect this type of information more strongly to influence recall and therefore the survival of the individual.
   In the past, it was suggested that remembering is associated with conceptual processing and knowing is associated with perceptual processing. However, recent studies have reported that there are some conceptual factors that influence knowing and some perceptual factors that influence remembering. Findings suggest that regardless of perceptual or conceptual factors, distinctiveness of processing at encoding is what affects remembering, and fluency of processing is what affects knowing. Remembering is associated with distinctiveness because it is seen as an effortful, consciously controlled process. Knowing, on the other hand, depends on fluency as it is more automatic and reflexive and requires much less effort.
   While a significant amount of research supports the existence of the self-reference effect, the processes behind it are not well understood. However, multiple hypotheses have been introduced, and two main arguments have been developed: the elaborative processing hypothesis and the organizational processing hypothesis. Encodings in reference to the self are so elaborate because of the information one has about the self. Information encoded with the self is better remembered than information encoded with reference to something else.
  
  Section::::Explanations for the self-reference effect.:Elaboration.
   Section::::Influences on remembering and knowing.:Factors that influence both remember and know responses are.:Word vs. non-word memory.
  
  When words are used as stimuli, more remember responses and fewer know responses are produced in comparison to when nonwords are used as stimuli.
  
  Section::::Influences on remembering and knowing.:Factors that influence both remember and know responses are.:Gradual vs. rapid presentation.
  
  Gradual presentation of stimuli causes an increase in familiarity and thus an increase in associated know responses; however, gradual presentation causes a decrease in remember responses.
  
  Section::::Influences on remembering and knowing.:Role of emotion.
   A possible mechanism of the parietal lobe's involvement in recognition memory may be differential activation for recollected versus familiar memories, and old versus new stimuli. This region of the brain shows greater activation during segments of recognition tasks containing primarily old stimuli, versus primarily new stimuli. A dissociation between the dorsal and ventral parietal regions has been demonstrated, with the ventral region experiencing more activation for recollected items, and the dorsal region experiencing more activation for familiar items.
   Emotional items also appear more likely to be processed when attention is limited, suggesting a facilitated or prioritized processing of emotional information. This effect was demonstrated using the attentional blink paradigm in which 2 target items are presented in close temporal proximity within a stream of rapidly presented stimuli.
   However, although the external environment is important at the time of encoding in creating multiple pathways for retrieval, other studies have shown that simply creating the same internal state that you had at the time of encoding is sufficient to serve as a retrieval cue. Therefore, putting yourself in the same mindset that you were in at the time of encoding will help recall in the same way that being in the same situation helps recall. This effect called context reinstatement was demonstrated by Fisher and Craik 1977 when they matched retrieval cues with the way information was memorized.
   For example, if a person examines a shopping list with one item highlighted in bright green, he or she will be more likely to remember the highlighted item than any of the others. Additionally, in the following list of words – desk, chair, bed, table, chipmunk, dresser, stool, couch – chipmunk will be remembered the most as it stands out against the other words in its meaning.
  
  Section::::Explanation.
   The theory of "encoding specificity" finds similarities between the process of recognition and that of recall. The "encoding specificity principle" states that memory utilizes information from the memory trace, or the situation in which it was learned, and from the environment in which it is retrieved. In other words, memory is improved when information available at encoding is also available at retrieval. For example, if one is to learn about a topic and study it in a specific location, but take their exam in a different setting, they would not have had as much of a successful memory recall as if they were in the location that they learned and studied the topic in. Encoding specificity helps to take into account context cues because of its focus on the retrieval environment, and it also accounts for the fact recognition may not always be superior to recall.
   BULLET::::2. The duration of visible persistence is inversely related to stimulus luminance. When the luminance, or brightness of a stimulus is increased, the duration of visible persistence decreases. Due to the involvement of the neural system, visible persistence is highly dependent on the physiology of the photoreceptors and activation of different cell types in the visual cortex. This visible representation is subject to masking effects whereby the presentation of interfering stimulus during, or immediately after stimulus offset interferes with one's ability to remember the stimulus.
   To know is a feeling (unconscious) of "familiarity". It is the sensation that the item has been seen before, but not being able to pin down the reason why. Knowing simply reflects the familiarity of an item without recollection. Knowing utilizes semantic memory that requires perceptually based, data-driven processing. Knowing is the result of shallow maintenance rehearsal that can be influenced by many of the same aspects as semantic memory.
  