Your Memory Stinks and Search Engines Smell It

Human memory is incredibly bad. In fact, it is so bad that you probably don’t remember what you ate for breakfast just a few days ago. The interesting thing is that human brainpower is pretty impressive; we are outstanding at pattern matching and problem solving. Memory has everything to do with search.

You often search because you have poor memory. But, it isn’t so poor that you are a blank slate, tabula rasa. No, instead, you have a clue and you are buying more clues with every search you do. Let’s cut to the core of this.

Your ability to pattern match and recognize is outstanding, but your ability to dredge up old memories is awful. This is recognition versus recall at work.

Put into a simple example, you are great with faces but you just can’t remember names. Which face? Any face! By the way, you aren’t special or unique. You are like every other human on the planet. You are better with faces than names.

Why?

Show Me and Don’t Make Me Think!

The answer is simple. When you see a face you match it against what you know. You are matching patterns. You are capitalizing on your ability to recognize faces. But, you can’t remember names because you have poor recall. You can’t dredge up the name that goes with that face. Recognition in this case is a face-to-face matching exercise. Folks, that is pretty easy.

But really, why is it easier to recognize someone versus recalling their name? The fundamental question has not been answered. Actually, I’m sort of lying.

Spreading Activation, Cues and Related Psychological Foo Foo

It comes down to cues and activation of similar information in your brain. Recognition of a face is an apples-to-apples exercise. Example: Face is stored in memory, you see face, you match face to what is in your mind, and you determine there is a match. Bingo! On the other hand, when you see a face and have to remember a name, the face-to-face match paradigm is broken. It is a face-to-name match, and that isn’t so easy.

Let’s rub this way. A face-to-face search (recognition) is a matter of matching visual information (face) to the same visual information (face). However, matching a face (visual) to a name (language item) is not the same kind of matching. X matches X is easier than X matches Y or more accurately, X activates Y to get Z. That’s almost mathematically interesting, isn’t it.

I’ve grossly abused this concept through simplification, but that’s fine. They key is that it is easier to recognize something than it is to recall something. For those folks that are still lost, up above I’ve just explained why a multiple-choice exam seems easier than writing an essay (for most folks at least).

If your recall was good, you would do much less searching. Most of us need to search to perform recognition exercises.

“I know it when I see it!”

Therefore, we hastily throw together a query and begin the search exercise. We fire off query after query so that the results come back, as fast as possible, and we press forward. You are a pattern matching bug…

Prediction: Recall Driven Search

The summary is that search is dominated by the human memory framework of recognition. Search engines work these days because they capitalize on our pattern matching skills and recognition abilities, no doubt about it.

This story needed to be told. If it is obvious to you now, I’m glad. If you think this is all puff, then throw me some references. I’ve not seen much, if anything, about how recognition and search go hand-in-hand.

In any event, I think that truly powerful search engines will move far beyond the recognition-capitalization stage. Eventually, search will capitalize on our recognition and recall abilities, not just recognition alone.

What will that look like? That’s the wrong question. What will it feel like? Riiight, now that’s a much better question to ask. It’ll feel like someone is talking to you. Your conversation with the search engine will feel good. It’ll be your friend and you won’t know how you got along with it.

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Reference…

The Psychology of Search: Chapter One

You don’t care much about the technology of search. You care about results. Search is an indication of failure, not success. If you had the answers, you wouldn’t need to search.

The Psychology of Search: Chapter Two

Search is a conversation, a contract and perhaps a negotiation between two parties (man or machine). Search engines technically represent a set of basic human activities, such as information seeking, discovery, and problem solving.