Retrieval Tasks

Free Association provides a subject with a cue (e.g. "Type of animal") and requires them to respond with the first word that comes to mind (e.g. cat). Sometimes a prior study list is presented to the subject and it has been shown that words that occur in the prior study list are more likely to be produced even though the subject is not instructed to use the study list to make their decisions. Free association is a retrieval task because the required response is a word.

Cued Recall with a List Associate requires the subject to study a list of pairs of words. At test, subjects are given a list of words and asked which word occurred with each of the test words during the study episode (e.g. "Which word occurred with boy in the study list?"). Again, cued recall with a list associate is a retrieval task because it requires the subject to respond with a word.