ABSTRACT
In a 1991 interview, Endel Tulving remarked that “The key process in memory is retrieval.” This chapter takes that thesis as its starting point and details a variety of ways in which it is true. Calling attention to the relatively neglected stage of retrieval and bringing the topic into sharp focus were perhaps the main thrusts of Tulving’s research in the 1970s and 1980s. Now he studies the neural underpinnings of retrieval, among other topics, and other writers in this volume will explore these fascinating recent discoveries. The purpose of my chapter is to elucidate and defend the thesis that Tulving outlined in his 1991 interview. Although retrieval is not now a neglected stage of the learning/memory process, as it was when Tulving began his career, it still seems safe to say that most writers and thinkers still assume that encoding and storage are the primary stages of the learning and memory process, with retrieval functioning merely to express the changed state of the nervous system from prior experience. This accepted view, as we shall see, is wrong.
