Explanations for forgetting: Retrieval faliure Flashcards
What is retrieval failure?
When people forget information due to the fact that they do not have the sufficient cues to access the memory. When we store a new memory, we also store information about the situation and these are known as cues.
What are context dependent cues?
Based on the environment in which information is coded and retrieved. E.g a place.
What are state dependent forgetting cues?
Memory is best when a person is in the same physical and physiological state at the time of encoding and the time of retrieval. For example, drunk. They will be more likely to recall the information if they are in the same state again.
Outline Godden & Baddeley’s research into context-dependent forgetting
They studied deep sea divers who work underwater to see if training on land helped or hindered their work underwater. The divers learned a list of words and were asked to recall them later. learn on land- recall on land.
Learn on land - recall underwater
Learn underwater- recall on land
Learn underwater- recall underwater.
Retrieval was best in the matching conditions. This concluded that external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall which led to retrieval failure.
Outline research into state dependent forgetting.
Gave antihistamine drugs to their participants. They had a mild sedative effect which created a different physiological state than the normal state. They had to learn a list of words and then recall them. Learn on drug- recall on drug
Learn on drug- recall not on drug
Learn not on drug- recall on drug
Learn not on drug- recall not on drug.
Recall was again better where there was continuity between the two states. Shows that when cues were absent, there was more forgetting.
Give a strength of retrieval failure as an explication for forgetting. (Real world application)
Baddely said that retrieval failure has real world application. For example, we all have the experience of being in one room and thinking I must get that from the other room and then entering the room and forgetting what it was. So you return to the first room and you can recall it again. This shows how research can remind us of strategies we can use in the real world to recall our recall.
Give a limitation of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting. (Recall vs recognition)
Context effects may depend substantially on the type of memory being tested. Godden and Baddely recreated their underwater experiment but used recognition instead of recall. They had to say wether they recognised a word read from a list. When recognition was tested, there was no context dependent effect and performance was the same. this suggests that retrieval failure is a limited explanation for forgetting because it only applies when a person has to recall information rather than retrieve it.
What are the two types of retrieval cues?
-Context-dependent
-State-dependent
