Active recall is when you actively stimulate your memory for a piece of information.
Imagine reviewing medical facts for your Physiology test. You have all the terms written on flashcards, and now you’re going through them. As you turn over a new card, you see the question, and you know that on the other side is the answer.
That moment—when you try to remember the answer before checking it—is active recall. It's retrieval practice; it's when your brain goes into its vast scaffolded storehouse of information and looks for that one specific piece of data.
Active recall vs. recognition
Contrast this with doing a multiple-choice test (which doesn't work well for studying). Because all the answers are in front of you, you don’t get that moment of blank-faced concentration while you find the data in your brain; there's no retrieval practice. You simply look at the answers and choose the one which seems right. This isn’t active recall, it’s recognition.
Active recall vs. passive review
Active recall is also not the same as re-reading or highlighting. Re-reading is when you go back through your notes. Maybe you skim them or maybe you go back through them in depth. But you’re not reaching back into that bank of knowledge you have stuffed in your brain to retrieve the information, so it’s not active recall. Re-reading and highlighting are forms of passive review.
The cognitive science behind active recall
Why is active recall so effective? Basically, the more we practice retrieving information from our memory, the better we get at it. In fact, it's the retrieval practice that actually helps us learn the information.
Karpicke and Roediger did the classic research on this. Their famous study is a bit complex, but they basically found that what matters for recalling information is how much you test yourself on it using active recall. It also demonstrates that you should use active recall on everything you’re trying to remember, not just the stuff you think you haven’t mastered yet.
In a follow-up study, researchers found that retrieval (active recall) was more effective than concept mapping or elaborative study for remembering information. Further research has continued to support these findings.
The take away is this: retrieving information using active recall helps you remember it. It’s much better than simply recognizing an answer, re-reading information, note-taking, or concept mapping.
Sources
Butler, A. C. (2010). Repeated testing produces superior transfer of learning relative to repeated studying. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(5), 1118. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019902
Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772-775. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199327
Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319(5865), 966-968. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1152408
McDaniel, M. A., Howard, D. C., & Einstein, G. O. (2009). The read-recite-review study strategy: Effective and portable. Psychological Science, 20(4), 516-522. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2009.02325.x
Nilson, L.(2010). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors. Jossey-Bass.
