explanations for forgetting: retrieval failure Flashcards
what is retrieval failure
a form of forgetting it occurs when we don’t have necessary cues to access the memory.
when information is placed in memory –»associated cues are also stored at the same time –» if these cues are not available at the time of recall=they make it appear as though you have forgotten the information but in fact this is due to retrieval failure.
what are cues
cues are things that serve as reminders they may meaningfully link to the material to be remembered or may not
what is the encoding specificity principle?
ESP»>further states that a cue does not have to be exactly right but the closer the cue is to the original item the more useful it will be
What did Tulving and Pearlstone demonstrate?
they demonstrated the value of retrieval cues in a study where pps had to learn to 48 words belonging to 12 categories
what was the method of Tulving and Pearlstone study?
- each word =presented as category + word
- e.g. fruit-apple
- 2 different recall conditions
- free recall=recall as many words as they could
- cued recall=given cues in the form of the category names
What were the results of Tulving and Pearlstone study
Free recall = 40% of words were recalled on average
Cued Recall=60% of the words were recalled
*this shows that cues that have been either explicitly or implicitly encoded at the time of learning=have a meaningful link to the learning material
