Consequences of Testing Memory

Studies using a wide variety of conditions and a diverse set of procedures show that testing memory affects future behavior. The studies have used differing terminology and have been ascribed to differing specialty areas of the literature. Partly, for this reason, the various phenomena have been described in ways, suggesting they differ in substance. In this chapter, we relate many of these phenomena and show that they might be due to a set of common memory processes, processes that can act through conscious, strategic or unconscious, implicit means. The critical strand that links the phenomena is that memory is a continuous process that constantly stores and retrieves information.