Explanation of forgetting: Retrieval Failure

Question 1

Retrieval Failure

Answer 1

• Retrieval failure occurs when we don’t have necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided such as mood or degree of drunkenness.

Question 2

Retrieval Failure

Answer 2

• Retrieval failure occurs when we don’t have necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided such as mood or degree of drunkenness

Question 3

Cue

Answer 3

• A trigger of information that allows us to access a memory which may be meaningful or may be indirectly linked by being encoded at the time of learning. A cue can be external such as environmental context or internal such as your mood or degree of drunkenness.

Question 4

Godden and Baddeley procedure

Answer 4

• Godden and Baddeley conducted an experiment where 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 for divers: learn on land and recall on land, learn on land and recall underwater, learn underwater and recall on land or learn underwater and recall underwater

Question 5

Godden and baddeley findings

Answer 5

They found that in the environmental condition that did not match accurate recall was 40% lower than the matching condition. This shows that the external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure

Question 6

Tulving principle

Answer 6

Tulving identified the encoding specificity principle which states that if a cue is to help us to recall information it has to be present at encoding and at retrieval. This means that if the cues available at encoding and retrieval are different, forgetting will occur

Question 7

Carter and Cassaday procedure

Answer 7

Carter and Cassaday gave anti-histamine drugs to their participants which made them drowsy and they had to learn a list of words and passages of prose and then recall the information

Question 8

Carter and Cassaday findings

Answer 8

. They found that in the conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse

Question 9

a strength of retrieval failure

Answer 9

A strength of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting is the research supporting cues as an explanation for forgetting.

• Carter and Cassaday gave anti-histamine drugs to their participants which made them drowsy and they had to learn a list of words and passages of prose and then recall the information.
• They found that in the conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse.
• This is a strength as the research support offers reliability as this study supports the idea of the lack of cues resulting in forgetting and thus psychologists can be confident that they can generalise the findings to real-life

Question 10

a weakness of retrieval failiure

Answer 10

However a weakness of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgtting is the experiments used to investigate retrieval failiure is criticised for being artificial.

• For instance, Godden and Bddeley memory task in which the divers had to remember a list of words either on land or underwater.
• This is an issue as it lacks mundane realism as typically people’s memory are not usually tested in this way and thus is not reflective of real life memory.
• This is a weakness as the the task is artificial which means the findings can be criticised for having low ecological validity and thus cannot be generalised to the wider population