e interferences;
and, in general, recall being a much less manageable process than
memorizing, we do not have anything like the same mass of practical
information regarding it. One or two suggestions have some value,
however.

(1) Give the stimulus a good chance. Look squarely at the person whose
name you wish to recall, avoiding doubt as to your ability to recall
it; for doubt is itself a distraction. Put yourself back into the time
when you formerly used this person's name. In extemporaneous speaking,
go ahead confidently, avoid worry and self-consciousness, and, full of
your subject, trust to your ideas to recall the words as needed. Once
carried away with his subject, a speaker may surprise himself by his
own fluency.

(2) Drop the matter for a while, and come back to it afresh.
Sometimes, when you cannot at once recall a name, it does no good to
keep doggedly hunting, while half an hour later you get it without the
least trouble. The explanation of this curious phenomenon is found in
interference and the dying out of interference. At your first attempt
to recall the name, you simply got on the wrong track, and thus gave
this wrong track the "recency" advantage over the right track; but
this temporary advantage fades out rapidly with rest and leaves the
advantage with the track most used in the past.

The rule to drop a matter when baffled and confused, and take it up
again when fresh, can be used in more complex cases than hunting for a
name. When, in trying to solve any sort of problem, you find yourself
in a rut, about the only escape is to back off, rest up, and make an
entirely fresh start.

{357}

Recognition

The fourth question propounded at the beginning of the chapter, as to
how we can know that the fact now recalled is what we formerly
committed to memory and now wish to recall, is part of the larger
question of how we recognize. What we recognize includes not only
facts recalled, but also facts not recalled but presented a second
time to the senses. Recognition of objects seen, heard, touched, etc.,
is the most rudimentary form of memory. The baby shows signs of
recognizing persons and things before he shows signs of recall. A
little later, he recognizes and understands words before he begins to
speak (recall) them; and everybody's vocabulary of recognized words
remains much greater than his speaking vocabulary. We recognize faces
that we could not recall, and names that we could not recall. In