ABSTRACT
The influence of the Atkinson-Shiffrin (1968) model is far-reaching to the point that one current memory textbook refers to it as the “modal model” (Schwartz & Reisberg, 1991). The Atkinson-Shiffrin chapter focussed on cued and free recall, proposing a serial search as the control process underlying retrieval in these tasks. However, in a last section on “Further considerations…” they previewed what has become one of the most central controversies regarding models of recognition memory.
Search processes seem at first glance to offer an easy means for the analysis of differences between recognition and recall. One could assume, for example, that… the search component… is not part of the recognition process; that is, one might assume that in recognition the relevant information in LTS is always found and retrieval depends solely on matching the stored information against the item presented for test. (p. 186)
