IMPROVEMENT IN RECALL OVER TIME WITHOUT REPEATED TESTING - SPONTANEOUS-RECOVERY REVISITED

Four experiments investigated spontaneous recovery, or memory improvement over time without repeated testing. Although this phenomenon was previously studied within the verbal learning tradition, evidence for its existence was inconclusive. Experiments 1a-3 demonstrated the effect, showing that spontaneous recovery can be produced reliably across different types of study materials. One key is assessing spontaneous recovery in a within-subjects, rather than a between-subjects, design to permit a more sensitive test of the phenomenon. The proposed explanation for the effect invokes the process of retrieval inhibition as the cause of retroactive interference and the subsequent dissipation of inhibition as the cause of spontaneous recovery.