6. explanations for forgetting: retrieval failure

Question 1

RETRIEVAL FAILURE DUE TO THE ABSENCE OF CUES
The reason people forget information may be because of insufficient cues.
When information is initially placed in memory, associated cues are stored at the same time.
If these cues are not available at the time of recall, it may appear as if you have forgotten the information but, in fact, this is due to

Answer 1

retrieval failure not being able to access memories that are there.

Question 2

ENCODING SPECIFICITY PRINCIPLE
Tulving reviewed research into retrieval failure and discovered a consistent pattern to the findings.
He summarised this pattern in what he called the encoding specificity principle (ESP).
This states that

Answer 2

a cue (if it is going to be helpful) has to be both present at encoding (when we learn the material) and present at retrieval (when we are recalling it).
It follows from this that if the cues available at encoding and retrieval are different (or if cues are entirely absent at retrieval) there will be some forgetting.

Question 3

Some cues are encoded at the time of learning in a meaningful way.
Other cues are also encoded at the time of learning but not in a meaningful way.
Two examples of non-meaningful cues:

Answer 3

· Context-dependent forgetting - recall depends on external cue (e.g. weather or a place).
· State-dependent forgetting - recall depends on internal cue (e.g. feeling upset, being drunk).

Question 4

RESEARCH ON CONTEXT-DEPENDENT FORGETTING

PROCEDURE: Godden and Baddeley studied deep-sea divers who work underwater to see if training on land helped or hindered their work underwater.
The divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land.
This created four conditions:

Answer 4

• Learn on land - recall on land
• Learn underwater - recall on land.
• Learn on land - recall underwater.
• Learn underwater - recall underwater.

Question 5

RESEARCH ON CONTEXT-DEPENDENT FORGETTING

FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS:
In two of these conditions the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched, whereas in the other two they did not.
Accurate recall was

Answer 5

40% lower in the non-matching conditions.
They concluded that the external cues available at learning were different from the ones available at recall and this led to retrieval failure.

Question 6

RESEARCH ON STATE-DEPENDENT FORGETTING

PROCEDURE: Carter gave antihistamine drugs to their participants.
The antihistamines had a mild sedative effect making the participants slightly drowsy creates an internal physiological state different from the ‘normal’ state of being awake and alert.

4 conditions

Answer 6

The participants had to learn lists of words and then recall the information, again creating four conditions:
* Learn on drug - recall when on drug.
* Learn not on drug - recall when on drug.
* Learn on drug - recall when not on drug.
* Learn not on drug - recall when not on drug.

Question 7

RESEARCH ON STATE-DEPENDENT FORGETTING

Carter
Findings

Answer 7

In the conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse.
when cues are absent there is more forgetting.

Question 8

AO3: strength of RETRIEVAL FAILURE

real life application

Answer 8

One strength is that retrieval cues can help to overcome some forgetting in everyday situations.
Although cues may not have a very strong effect on forgetting, Baddeley suggests they are still worth paying attention to. For instance, we have probably all had the experience of being in one room and thinking one must go and get such-and-such item from another room. You go to the other room only to forget what it was you wanted. But the moment you go back to the first room, you remember again. When we have trouble remembering something, it is probably worth making the effort to recall the environment in which you learned it first.
This shows how research can remind us of strategies we use in the real world to improve our recall.

Question 9

AO3: limitation of RETRIEVAL FAILURE

context effects not strong

Answer 9

Baddeley argues that context effects are actually not very strong, especially in everyday life.
Different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen. For example, it would be hard to find an environment as different from land as underwater (Godden and Baddeley). In contrast, learning something in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to result in much forgetting because these environments are generally not different enough.
This means that retrieval failure due to lack of contextual cues may not actually explain much everyday forgetting.

Question 10

AO3: limitation of RETRIEVAL FAILURE

problems with the ESC - circular reasoning

Answer 10

The encoding specificity principle is untestable and leads to a form of circular reasoning.
In experiments where a cue provides successful recall of a word, we assume its because the cue was at the time of learning. If it doesn’t, the we assume that the cue was never encoded to begin with. These are just assumptions as there is no way to independently establish or test if the cue was encoded or not.
This is a limitation because it highly questions the validity of the ESP, and casts doubt on the principle of retrieval failre itself.