Explanations for forgetting-Retrieval failure

Question 1

What did Tulving discover?

Answer 1

That retrievlal failure is due to the encoding specificity principle.

Question 2

What is the encoding specificity principle?

Answer 2

If a cue is to help us recall information it must be present at encoding and retrieval. If the cues are different or absent, there will be some forgetting.

Question 3

What are the two types of forgetting?

Answer 3

Context-dependent, where the environment or objects act as cues, and state-dependent forgetting, where the state of the person acts as a cue.

Question 4

What evidence is there for context-dependent forgetting?

Answer 4

Godden and Baddeley carried out a study on divers working underwater. The divers had to learn a set of words on land or in the water and had to recall on land or in the water. It found that accurate recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions, supporting ESP as when the external cues were different, there was more forgetting.

Question 5

What evidence is there for state-dependent forgetting?

Answer 5

Carter and Cassaday gave anti-histamine drugs to some of the participants, making them slightly drowsy. This changed the state they were in. They were asked to learn and recall information in four groups where they were on or off drugs. Memory was significantly worse when the conditions were different, showing when the cues are absent their is more forgetting.

Question 6

What are the strengths of ESP?

Answer 6

There is lots of supporting evidence such as from Baddeley and Godden, increasing the validity of the theory.
There is real life application because we walk into rooms forgetting why we went there and then return to the original room, remembering what we left for.

Question 7

What are the weaknesses of ESP?

Answer 7

Context effects aren’t as major in real life as in Baddeley and Godden’s so contextual cues may not explain much forgetting.
Godden and Baddeley repeated their experiment using recognition and found that there were no context effects, limiing the value of ESP as memory had to be tested in a certain way.
ESP is not a testable concept and so we cannot establish that a cue has really been encoded.