Continuity between Recall and Recognition

The discontinuity hypothesis is that recall and recognition are in some sense fundamentally different memory processes. The continuity hypothesis is that retrieval in both modes is essentially the same, a joint product of the information stored in the past and that in the immediate environment. Data from a simple experiment and a brief discussion of other studies in the literature support the proposal that the continuity view is both more parsimonious and more fruitful than the discontinuity view.