Techniques Used for Recall
Putting Memory Research to Work
Psychologists do not just study memory in a laboratory — their findings are used to solve real-world problems. One of the clearest examples is advertising. Companies want customers to remember their products long after an advert has finished, so they design adverts using techniques based on how memory actually works: cues, repetition, and avoiding overload. The theory of reconstructive memory also helps explain why some adverts can even create false memories of a product.
Advertisers use three main techniques to help people remember their products: using cues, using repetition, and avoiding overload. Each technique is based on how the multi-store model and reconstructive memory theory say memory actually works.
Cues and Repetition
A retrieval cue is anything that helps trigger a stored memory when it is needed. Advertisers build cues into their adverts — a jingle, a logo, a colour scheme or a slogan — so that when a customer later sees the product on a shelf, the cue triggers recall of the advert’s message. Without a strong cue, information can suffer retrieval failure: it is still stored somewhere in memory, but the customer cannot access it because the right trigger is missing.
Repetition works alongside cues. Showing the same advert many times, or repeating a slogan several times within one advert, increases rehearsal. According to the multi-store model, more rehearsal makes it more likely that information transfers from short-term memory into long-term memory, where it can be stored for years rather than seconds.
Repetition increases rehearsal. The multi-store model predicts that more rehearsal makes information more likely to transfer from short-term memory into long-term memory, which is why the same advert is shown across many TV breaks rather than once.
Avoiding Overload
Short-term memory has a limited capacity. If an advert tries to communicate too many facts, prices or product features at once, it causes cognitive overload, and much of the information is lost before it can even be rehearsed.
Effective adverts avoid overload by focusing on one clear message, one strong image and one memorable phrase, rather than cramming in everything a company wants to say. This is a direct application of the multi-store model: because short-term memory can only hold a limited amount at once, giving the viewer less to process actually increases the chance that the key message survives into long-term storage.
Autobiographical advertising asks viewers to picture themselves inside a personal memory — for example, being asked to picture drinking a brand of lemonade as a child. Braun, Ellis and Loftus (2002) studied this technique directly, showing how adverts using personal, nostalgic imagery could shape participants’ memories of a product experience.
This links back to reconstructive memory theory: because memory is rebuilt using schemas and expectation rather than played back exactly, an advert that supplies a vivid, personal-feeling scene can encourage a viewer to reconstruct a memory that includes the product — even if the product was not really part of that original experience. This is one reason autobiographical advertising is considered a powerful, if ethically questionable, recall technique.
Neuropsychology and Measuring Memory
Alongside advertising, memory research has developed neuropsychology as a way of measuring memory function directly, rather than just observing behaviour from the outside. Neuropsychological tests and brain imaging techniques allow psychologists and clinicians to see which memory processes are affected when the brain is damaged, such as in cases of amnesia.
One widely used tool is the Wechsler Memory Scale. It measures several different memory functions separately — including immediate recall, delayed recall and working memory — rather than treating memory as a single skill. This matters because, as the multi-store model and studies such as Wilson, Kopelman and Kapur (2008) show, different types of memory can be damaged independently of one another after brain injury.
Brain imaging and scales such as the Wechsler Memory Scale allow doctors to identify exactly which memory processes a patient has lost, which helps with diagnosis and planning support. For example, a patient might perform normally on tests of long-term memory but poorly on tests of working memory, pointing to damage in a specific area of processing rather than a general memory problem.
This neuropsychological approach is a direct, applied use of memory theory: the multi-store model’s idea of separate stores with different capacities and durations is exactly what these tests are designed to detect and measure.
The Wechsler Memory Scale measures different memory functions separately, such as immediate recall, delayed recall and working memory. This reflects the multi-store model’s idea that memory is made up of separate stores that can be damaged independently.