explanations for forgetting ; retrieval failure

Question 1

ESP
encoding specificity principle

Answer 1

Tulvig 1983 revised research into retrieval failure and discovered a consistent pattern to the findings.
summarised this into the ESP
if a cue is to help us recall information it has to be present at encoding and at retrieval
follows from this that cues available at encoding and retrieval are different there will be some forgetting
some cues are linked to the material to be remembered in a meaningful way ie mnemonic techniques.
other cues are also encoded at the Time of learning but not in a meaningful way ie state dependent forgetting and context dependent forgetting

Question 2

Godden and Baddely 1975
context depending forgetting
procedure

Answer 2

the divers learned a list of words either underwater or on the land and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land. this therefore created for conditions
learn on land / recall on land
learn on land / recall underwater
learn underwater / recall on land
learn underwater / recall underwater

Question 3

Godden and Baddely 1975
context depending forgetting
findings

Answer 3

in two of these conditions the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched , whereas in the other two they didnt.
accurate recall was 40% lower in the non matching conditions
external cues available at learning were different from those present at recall and this led to retrieval failure

Question 4

Carter and Cassaday 1998
state dependent forgetting
procedure

Answer 4

gave an anti histamine drugs to their participants , that have 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 ps had to learn list of words and passages of prose and then recall the info creating 4 conditions
learn on drug / recall when on
learn on drug / recall when not on it
learn not on drug / recall when on it
learn not on drug / recall when not on it

Question 5

Carter and Cassaday 1998
state dependent forgetting
findings

Answer 5

in the conditions 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 then there is more forgetting

Question 6

strength
supporting evidence

Answer 6

godden and badly and Carter and Cassaday are two examples of research
Eysenck 2010 goes as far to argue that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM
strength bc supporting evidence increases the validity of an explanation.

Question 7

limitation
questioning context effects

Answer 7

Badly 1997 argues that contact effects are actually not very strong especially in real lie , different contacted have to be very different indexed before an effect is seen . ie it would be hard to find an environment was different from land as underwater.
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
limitation as does not explain the real life palliations of retrieval failure due to contextual cues don’t actually explain much forgetting

Question 8

limitation
recall v recognition

Answer 8

Godden and Baddely 1980 replicated their underwater experiment but use a recognition test instead of recall
ps had to say other they recognised a word read to them from the list instead of retrieving it for themselves
recognition was tested there was no context dependent effect performance was the same in all four conditions
limitation as it shows that the presence or absence of cues only affects memory when you test it in a certain way