Optional Stopping and the Termination of Memory Retrieval

Abstract

Recent years have seen an increased interest in understanding memory-retrieval dynamics and, in particular, what makes a person decide to terminate the memory-search process. We review research that has employed the open-ended retrieval paradigm (Dougherty & Harbison, 2007) and focus on the behavioral regularities it has revealed. The main finding of this research is that people’s memory-search behavior follows a lawful pattern of a convex decreasing relation between exit latency, or the time between the final retrieval and the decision to terminate search, and the number of items retrieved. Theoretical work has converged on a stopping rule that treats the retrieval process as a costly cognitive process that is truncated on the basis of a comparative judgment of perceived relative benefit. Parallels with other search domains are highlighted.