What is the term for the process of being able to identify something encountered before?

The process of being able to identify something that has been encountered before is referred to as recognition. This involves the ability to identify previously learned information or stimuli upon encountering them again. Recognition is typically associated with a feeling of familiarity, where an individual can recognize a face, a place, or an object even if they cannot explicitly retrieve the details about it.

For example, if you see a person you met at a party months ago, and you can recognize them but cannot remember their name, you are experiencing recognition. This is distinct from recall, which requires retrieving information from memory without the assistance of cues, such as writing an essay from memory. Recollection refers to the act of retrieving details and context about a past event or experience, and reinstatement may refer to recreating the context of a memory but does not specifically pertain to the identification process like recognition does. Thus, recognizing something you have encountered before highlights the role of familiarity in memory processes.