Metacognitive Processes before and during Retrieval

Abstract

Whittlesea’s statement suggests that retrieval can depend on expectations, and that a degree of freedom can be added to the retrieval processes. This additional freedom provides room for voluntary pre-retrieval strategies used when responding to an environmental cue. These pre-retrieval strategies are the focus of this contribution.

The idea that people have expectations, developed in previous experiences, or on the fly during the current event, which they use to evaluate the goodness and significance of their current processing, adds a degree of freedom in the evolution of subjective reactions that is absent in other accounts (of retrieval; Whittlesea, 2004, p.15).