Recollection is retrieval of memory. It is not a passive process; people employ metacognitive strategies to make the best use of their memory, and priming and other context an have a large effect on what is retrieved.

Plato believed that humans learn entirely through recollection. He thought that humans already possessed knowledge, and that they only had to be lead to discover what they already knew. In the Meno, Plato used the character of Socrates to ask a slave boy questions in an excellent demonstration of the Socratic method until the slave boy came to understand a square root without Socrates providing him with any information.