explanations for forgetting

Question 1

What is interference?

Answer 1

one memory disturbs the ability to recall another. This might result in forgetting or distorting one or the other or both. This is more likely to happen if the memories are similar.

Question 2

What are the two types of interference?

Answer 2

Proactive and retroactive

Question 3

What is proactive interference?

Answer 3

Previously learnt information interferes with the new information you are trying to store.

Question 4

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 4

A new memory interferes with older ones.

Question 5

What did McGeoch & McDonald (1931) do?

Answer 5

Studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of information.

1)Learnt a list of 10 words until they were 100% accurate
2)Learnt a second list of 10 words.
3)There were six different types of lists. Participants would be given one

Synonyms – words with the same meanings as original
Antonyms – words with opposite meanings to the original.

Question 6

What did McGeoch & McDonald (1931) find and what does this tell us about the nature of interference?

Answer 6

Most similar material (synonyms) produced the worst recall. This shows that interference is strongest when memories are similar.

Question 7

What are the strengths of interference as an explanation of forgetting?

Answer 7

Support from lab studies such as McGeoch and McDonald (1931) who found ……… as well as thousands of other lab experiments. This makes it more valid and therefore increases the replicability and the reliability as it’s a lab experiment.

Other research that is conducted in an everyday environment offers support fot the explanation. Baddeley & Hitch (1977) conducted research in an everyday environment, meaning it is a natural experiment and overcomes the criticism of ………………………… Asked rugby players to name the teams they had played so far in the season. Some players had played every game but some had missed games due to injury. Accurate recall did not depend on how long ago the matches took place but more importantly was the number of games they played in the meantime (more interference). This provides support for real life evidence for interference as an explanation of forgetting. This increases the external validity and application of the explanation to real life memory and forgetting. Which increases the explanatory power of the interference explanation.

Question 8

What are the limitations of interference as an explanation of forgetting?

Answer 8

Research that looks into interference as an explanation of forgetting is that it is mostly conducted in an artificial environment with artificial tasks. There is a much greater chance of supporting interference in laboratories due to the nature of the tasks being highly artificial. Often the material used for the tasks are words lists. They don’t really reflect material we learn/forget in everyday life. Therefore a critiscism of these studies is that they lack mundane realism. This is a limitation as we cannot therefore apply the findings from inference studies to real life explanations of forgetting.

Some studies on interference have been criticised for the time given between learning and recall. These tasks often require P’s to learn a list then recall, in which some studies leave short amounts of time between learning/recall. Criticised as this is not how we recall information. In real life we often don’t recall information immediately after remembering it. Results can not be applied to remembering/forgetting in real life- ungeneralisable.

Question 9

What is retrieval failure?

Answer 9

A form of forgetting that occurs when we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory. The memory is in the store but cannot be retrieved unless a suitable cue is given.

Question 10

What is a cue?

Answer 10

A trigger for information that allows us to gain access to a memory. Cues are often meaningful and can be linked to external (the environment) or internal (our mood) contexts.

Question 11

What is the encoding specificity principal?

Answer 11

If a cue is to help us retrieve information, it has to be present at encoding (when we first learn the information) and at retrieval (when we recall it).
If the cues are different at encoding & retrieval, there will be some forgetting

Question 12

What are the two types of cue dependent forgetting identified by Tulving?

Answer 12

Context-Dependent Forgetting (external)
State-Dependent Forgetting (internal)

Question 13

What’s context-dependent forgetting?

Answer 13

This occurs when the right external cues (e.g. the environment you are in) were present at learning but not at retrieval.

This is because your context (the environment) has changed and the cues were present at learning but not at retrieval.

Question 14

What’s state-dependent forgetting?

Answer 14

This occurs when there is an absence of relevant psychological/physiological cues that were present at the time of learning and are missing at retrieval.

Question 15

What did Godden and Baddeley (1975) do?

Answer 15

carried out a really interesting study of deep-sea divers working underwater. In this situation it’s crucial - a matter of life and death - for divers to remember instructions given before diving about their work underwater.

Procedure In this study 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 therefore created four conditions:
• Learn on land - recall on land.
• Learn underwater - recall on land.
• Learn on land - recall underwater.
• Learn underwater - recall underwater.

Question 16

What did Godden and Baddeley (1975) find?

Answer 16

In two of these conditions the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched, whereas in the other two they did not. Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions. The external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure.

Question 17

What did Carter and Cassaday (1998) do?

Answer 17

Gave anti-histamine drugs (for treating hay fever) to their participants. The anti-histamines had a mild sedative effect making the participants slightly drowsy. This creates an internal physiological state different from the ‘normal’ state of being awake and alert. The participants had to learn lists of words and passages of prose and then recall the information, again creating four conditions:

• Learn on drug - recall when on it.
• Learn not on drug - recall when on it.
• Learn on it - recall when not on it.
• Learn not on it - recall when not on it.

Question 18

What did Carter and Cassaday (1998) find?

Answer 18

In the conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse. So when the cues are absent (for example, you are drowsy when recalling information but had been alert learning it) then there is more forgetting.

Question 19

What are the strengths of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting?

Answer 19

Vast amounts of research that supports Retrieval Failure as a reason as to why we forget. Godden and Baddeley (1975) found …. What are the strengths overall and of this type of research? Link to appropriate types of validity

The majority of memory research is conducted using lab experiments
E - LINK to Carter and Cassaday
C – Why is this a strength? HOWEVER – COUNTER ARGUE with weakness of using lab experiments LINK to Carter and Cassaday

Question 20

What are the limitations of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting?

Answer 20

It has been argued that the effect of the context (the environment) is not very strong. Contexts have to be very different to actually make a difference e.g. underwater & on land. In everyday life, we are in different contexts all the time (different classrooms) and are still able to retrieve information with little trouble. Real life application of context-dependent forgetting doesn’t actually explain much about forgetting, therefore has little explanatory power and the practical applications are limited.

Encoding Specificity Principle can’t be objectively tested. There can only be assumptions/inferences made about how it works, meaning it cannot be replicated or checked for reliability. This is a limitation as without any supportive research how do we know if ESP even exists. It makes the explanation of ESP limited and almost worthless.