Explanations Of Forgetting

Question 1

Retrieval Failure

Answer 1

“A form of forgetting. It occurs when we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided.”

Question 2

Cue

Answer 2

“A ‘trigger’ of information that allows us to access a memory. Such cues may be meaningful or may be indirectly linked by being encoded at the time of learning. Indirect cues may be external (environmental context) or internal (mode or degree of drunkenness).”

Question 3

Retrieval failure

Answer 3

Endal Tulving (1983) reviewed research into retrieval failure and discovered a consistent pattern to the findings.
He called his pattern the encoding specificity principle (ESP).
This states that if a cue is going to be helpful it has to be both:
- present at encoding (when we learn the material)
- present at retrieval (when we are recalling it)

Question 4

Two types of cue dependent forgetting

Answer 4

Context and State

Question 5

Context cues

Answer 5

Environmental, eg. Weather or a place

Question 6

State cues

Answer 6

Internal cues, eg. Feeling upset, being drunk

Question 7

Research for context-dependent forgetting

Answer 7

Golden and Baddeley (1975)
- Deep-sea divers learn 40 unrelated words either on the beach or under 15 feet of water.
- Half the divers were then asked to switch locations before they all tried to recall the words.

Question 8

Group A- Beach and Beach

Answer 8

Mean recall 13.5

Question 9

Group B- beach and under water

Answer 9

Mean recall 8.6

Question 10

Group C- Under water and under water

Answer 10

Mean recall 11.4

Question 11

Group D- Under water and beach

Answer 11

Mean recall 8.4

Question 12

Findings of Godden and Baddeley’s study

Answer 12

• In two of the conditions the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched, whereas the other two did not.
  
  • Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions.

Question 13

Conclusion of Godeen and Baddeley’s study

Answer 13

the external cues available at learning were different from the ones available at recall and this lead to retrieval failure

Question 14

Research on state-dependent forgetting

Answer 14

Carter and Cassaday (1998)
Gave antihistamine drugs to their participants. Had to learn a list of words then recall the mind ifferent conditions.

Question 15

Conditions for learning words (Carter and Cassaday)

Answer 15

Learn on drug- recall when on drug
Learn on drug- recall when not on drug
Learn not on drug- recall when on drug
Learn not on the drug- recall when not on the drug

Question 16

Interference

Answer 16

‘One memory disturbs the ability to recall another. This might result in forgetting or distorting on or the other or both. This is more likely to happen if the memories are similar.’

Question 17

Proactive interference

Answer 17

‘Previous learnt information interferes with the new information you are trying to store.’

Question 18

Retroactive interference

Answer 18

‘A new memory interferes with the older ones.’

Question 19

Supporting evidence that PI and RI are worse if the memories are similar

Answer 19

McGeoch and McDonald (1931)

Question 20

McGeoch and McDonald procedure

Answer 20

• studied RI by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of lists of words.
• Participants had a list of the same 10 words to recall until they were 100% accurate .
• They were then given a new list to learn
• Then they were required to recall the original list

Question 21

Group 1 McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 21

Words that had the same meanings as the original list

Question 22

Group 2 McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 22

Words had opposite meanings to the originals

Question 23

Group 3 McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 23

Words unrelated to the original words

Question 24

Group 4 McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 24

Nonsense syllables

Question 25

Group 5 McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 25

Three-digit numbers

Question 26

Group 6 McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 26

No new list

Question 27

Results McGeoch and McDonald

Answer 27

• Performance depended on the nature of the second list
• The most similar material (synonyms) produced the worst recall.
• When the participants were given very different material (eg. Three-digit numbers) the mean number of items recalled increased.

Question 28

Baddeley and Hitch (1977)

Answer 28

• Asked rugby players to recall the names of teams they had played so far in that season, week by week
• The number of intervening games varied as some players had missed games due to injury
• Accurate recall did not depend on how long ago the match took place. More important was the number of games played in the meantime.
• Players who played the most games (most interference for memory) had the poorest recall.
• Therefore, the validity of the theory is increased.

Question 29

Retroactive interference study

Answer 29

Schmidt et al. (2000)

Question 30

Aim of Schmidt et al

Answer 30

To assess the influence of retroactive upon the memory of street names learned during childhood.

Question 31

Procedure of Schmidt et al

Answer 31

• 700 names randomly selected from a database of 1700 former students at a Deutsch elementary school.
• Participants ranged from 11 to 79 years old.
• Participants were given a map of the Molenberg neighbourhood (where they had gone to school) with all 48 street names replaced with numbers.
• Participants asked to remember as many of the street names as possible.
• Other personal details collected included; how many times they had moved house, where they had lived and for how long, how often they had visited Molenberg.

Question 32

How was the amount of retroactive interference assessed? Schmidt et al

Answer 32

The number of times the individual had moved to another neighbourhood or city (thus learning new sets of street names).

Question 33

Independent variable Schmidt et al

Answer 33

How many times they have moved house

Question 34

Dependent variable

Answer 34

How many street names they can remember

Question 35

Findings Schmidt et al

Answer 35

There was a positive association between the number of times the participants had moved house outside the MOlenberg neighbourhood and the number of street names they had forgotten.

Question 36

Conclusions Schmidt et al

Answer 36

The findings suggested that learning new patterns of street names when moving house makes remembering old patterns of street names harder to do.
Retroactive interference does seem able to explain forgetting in some real-life situations.

Question 37

Counterpoint to Schmidt et al

Answer 37

• Interference may cause some forgetting in ‘real life’ but it is unusual because the conditions necessary are relatively rare.
• Two memories (sets of learning) have to be fairly similar in order to interfere with each other.
• This doesn’t happen often which suggests most forgetting may be better explained by other theories (retrieval failure due to lack of cues).

Question 38

Tulving and Psotka (1971)

Answer 38

• Gave participants lists of words organised into categories, one list at a time (they didn’t know what the categories were).
• Recall average was 70% for the first list.
• This became progressively worse as more lists were learnt (PI).
• At the end of the procedure the particpants were given a cued recall test- they were told the names of the categories.
• This shows that interference causes a temporary loss of accessibility to material that is still in the LTM.

Question 39

Retrograde Facilitation

Answer 39

• Coenen and van Luijtelaar (1997) gave participants lists of words and later asked them to recall them.
• The intervening experience in between would act as interference.

Question 40

Results Coenen and van Luijtelaar

Answer 40

• Those under the influence of diazepam- recall one week after was poor (compared with the placebo control group).
• But when the list was learnt before they took the drug was taken, later recall was better than the placebo group.

Question 41

John Wixted (2004)

Answer 41

• Suggests that the drug prevents new information (experiences after taking the drug) reading parts of the brain involved in processing memories.
• Therefore it cannot interfere retroactivity with information already stored.

Question 42

Danaher et al (2008)

Answer 42

• Found that recall recognition of an advertiser’s message were impaired when participants were exposed to two advertisements for competing brands within a week.
• This is a serious problem when so much money is spent on advertising
• Danaher et al suggest an application of this research is that such effects can be overcome by running the advert multiple times on one day to reduce interference effects.