Explanations For Forgetting: Retrieval Failure Flashcards
What is retreival failure?
A form of forgetting occurs when we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory, memory available but not accessible unless cues are provided
what are Cue?
A trigger of information that allows us to access memory
explain encoding specificity principle?
Tulving reviewed research into retrieval failure and discovered a constant pattern to the findings, he summarise his pattern and what he called encoding specificity principal. This says a cue has to be both present at encoding when we learn the material and present at retrieval, some cues are included at the time of learning in a meaningful way for example the cue STM might lead you to recall all sorts of information about short-term memory. Two examples of non-meaningful cues are context dependent forgetting and state dependent forgetting.
Explain research on context dependent forgetting sea divers?
Gordon and baddly studied deep sea divers who work underwater to see if training helped them recall list of words either underwater or on land and will ask to recall them underwater or on land
Explain findings of research on context dependent forgetting sea divers?
In two of these conditions the environmental context of learning and recall matched whereas in the other did not. recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions. They concluded the external cues at learning were different from the ones available at recall and this led to retrieval failure.
explain the procedure of research of state dependent forgetting?
Carter and Cassady gave antihistamine drugs to their participants. It had a mild sedative effect making the participant slightly drowsy. The participants had to learn a list of words of passages of pros and a recall information again creating full conditions. (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)
Explain one strength in retrieval cues?
Can help overcome forgetting in everyday situations, cues may not have very strong effect on forgetting for example you’re in one room and you want to go get something from another room but then you forget what you wanted so you go back in that room and you remember. Its, worth making an effort to recall the environment which learned in first this shows how research can remind us strategies using a real world to improve recall
what is one limitation of retrieval cues?
Context effects may depend subtly on memory being tested Gordon and badly replicated their underwater experiment but use a recognition test instead of recall to see when they recognise the word from the list when recognition was tested there’s no context dependent effect performance the same and conditions to suggest retrieval failure is limited explanation forgetting
