Evaluation for retrieval failure

Question 1

Evaluation

supporting evidence?

Answer 1

• impressive range of research supports retrieval failure
• studies by Godden and Baddeley
• Eysenck (2010)» goes onto further argue that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM
• Strength=supporting evidence=increases the validity of the explanation» especially true when the evidence shows that retrieval failure occurs in real life situations as well as in highly controlled conditions of the lab

Question 2

Evaluation

questioning context effects

Answer 2

• Baddeley argues that context effects»not very strong especially in real life
• different context have to be very different before an effect is seen
• e.g difficult to find an environment as different from land as water
• contrast= learning something in one room and then recalling it in another»unlikely to result in much forgetting

-limitation=bcause it means that the real life applications of retrieval failure»>due to contextual cues =don’t explain much forgetting

Question 3

Evaluation

problems with encoding specificity principle?

Answer 3

-esp.=cannot be tested there leads to a from of circular reasoning
-experiments=where a cue produces the successful recall of a word= we assume that the cue must have been encoded at the time of learning .
*cue= does not result in successful recall of word = then we assume that the cue was not encoded at the time of learning
^^these are all assumptions there is no way to independently establish whether or not the cue has really been encoded.

Question 4

Evaluation

Real life application

Answer 4

context related cues» worth paying attention to
E.G being upstairs and wanting to go downstairs to get such and such from down stairs only to forget when you get downstairs
-when having trouble remembering something»worth making the effort to try and return to the environment in which we first learnt it