In contrast, you retrieve information from your brain similarly to how you retrieve it from a search engine: you specify a piece of the information or something related to it, and it pops up. If I tell you “to be or not,” or if I google it, chances are that it will trigger “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” Indeed, it will probably work even if I use another part of the quote or mess things up somewhat. Such memory systems are called auto-associative, since they recall by association rather than by address.
