The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon involves a temporary inability to remember something you know and a feeling that the memory is just out of reach. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon shows that recall can often be jogged by retrieval cues – stimuli that help gain access to memories.
	Context cues can also facilitate the retrieval of information. It is easier to recall long-forgotten events, for example, if you return after a number of years to a place where you used to live.
	Memories are sketchy reconstructions of the past, which may be distorted and may include details that did not actually occur.  Research shows that reconstructions can be influenced by new information–the misinformation effect.  Elizabeth Loftus has shown that eyewitness testimony can be influenced by information presented to witnesses. Example: showed a video of two cars in an accident…asked some people how fast the cars were going when they HIT each other, asked others how fast the cars were going when the SMASHED INTO each other…a week later asked whether there was any broken glass in the video–the “smashed into” group said yes, the “hit” group said no.
	The misinformation effect is explained in part by the unreliability of source monitoring…the process of making inferences about the origins of memories…people make decisions at the time of retrieval about where their memory is coming from (Did I read that in the New York Times or Rolling Stone?). A source-monitoring error occurs when a memory derived from one source is misattributed to another source.