Explaination Of Forgetting Retreival Failure

Question 1

What is the encoding specificity principle

Answer 1

Memory is most effective if the information that is present at learning is also present at the time of retrieval.

Question 2

What study showed context dependant forgetting

Answer 2

Context-depending forgetting:
Godden and Bradley conducted a study using deep sea divers. They can to learn and recall a list of words in specific environments:
Learnt underwater and recalled underwater = 32% of words recalled
Learnt on land and recalled on land = 38% of words recalled
Learnt underwater and recalled on land = 23% of words recalled
Learn on land and recalled underwater = 24% of words recalled

Question 3

What study showed state dependant forgetting

Answer 3

Psychologists gave participants a drug that made them feel slightly drowsy. They then had to learn and recall the infomation in different conditions:
Learn and recall on drug
Learn and recall when not on the drug
(These groups did the best)

Learn on drug and recall off drug
Learn off the drug and recall on the drug
(These groups did worse)

Question 4

Strength evaluation

Answer 4

P- practical applications
E-a psychologist gave a group of participants a list of words to learn in a distinctive basement room. The next day he split particpants into 3 groups, one group went into the basement, one group went in a random room, and one went in a random room and were told to image the basement. They were then asked to recall the words in the new condition. Recall for the first group was 18, recall for the second group was 12 and the final group recalled 17.
E- suggests that we don’t have to physically be in the room we learnt the information, but we can imagine it and it will be just as effective

P- supportive research regarding the state of mood
E-a psychologist found a string relationship between mood and learning and retrieval. Mood dependance is an internal state and it more of a real life applications then the artificial task of the deep sea diver study
E- mundane realism, internal state also impacts retrieval failure

Question 5

Limitaion evaluation

Answer 5

P- unrealistic
E- learning and recalling words underwater to on land is a very dramatic environment change, such as in day to day life environments done differ to much, you would learn something in one room then try to recall it in another
E- not day to day life activities

P- contradictory findings
E- godden and baddeley conducted another version of their study, and changed the recall part of the study to a recognition section. They still learnt/recognised the words in water and on land. Results showed that performance was the same in all 4 conditions.
E- goes against the findings from the original study, suggesting that it has limited explanation.