Explanations of Forgetting: Retrieval Failure

Question 1

Key terms

Answer 1

Retrieval failure = 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.
Cue =. 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. For example, cues may be external (environmental context) or internal (mood or degree of drunkenness).

Question 2

Retrieval failure theory

The reason people forget information may be because of insufficient cues. When information is initially placed in memory, associated cues are stored at the same time. If these cues are not available at the time of recall, it may make it appear as if you have forgotten the information but, in fact this is due to retrieval failure – not being able to access memories that are there/available.

Answer 2

Encoding specificity principle (ESP)
Tulving (1983) reviewed research into retrieval failure and discovered a consistent pattern to the findings. He summarised this pattern in what he called the encoding specificity principle. This states that if a cue is to help us to recall information it has to be present at encoding (when we learn the material) and at retrieval (when we are recalling it). It follows from this that if the cues available at encoding and retrieval a different/if cues are entirely absent at retrieval, there will be some forgetting. Some cues are linked to the material-to-be-remembered in a meaningful way. For example, the cue ‘STM’ may lead you to recall all sorts of information about short-term memory. Other cues are also encoded at the time of learning but not in a meaningful way. We will consider two examples of this: context-dependent forgetting (external cues) and state-dependent forgetting (internal cues).

Context-dependent forgetting
Godden & Baddeley (1975) carried out a study of deep-sea divers working underwater. In this situation it’s crucial – a matter of life or death – for divers to remember instructions given before diving about their work underwater.
Procedure: In this study the dog is not a list of words either underwater or online and there they were asked to recall the words either underwater or lunch. This therefore created for conditions: learn on land - recall on land. learn on land - recall underwater. learn underwater - recall on land. learn underwater - recall underwater.
Findings: Into these conditions the environmental context of learning and recall match, where as in the other two they did not. Accurate recall was 40% lower in the nonmatching conditions. External queues available at learning were different from the ones are recalling this letter retrieval failure.

State-dependent forgetting
Procedure: Carter & Cassaday (1998) gave anti-histamine drugs (for treating hayfever) to their participants. The anti-histamines had a mild sedative effect making the participants slightly drowsy. This creates an internal physiological state different from the ‘normal’ state of being awake and alert. The participants had to learn lists of words and passages of prose and then recall the information, again creating for conditions: learn on drug - recall when on it. learn on it - recall when not on it. learn not in drug - recall when on it. learn not on it - recall when not on it.
Findings: In the conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse. So when the cues are absent (for example, you are drowsy when recording information but have been a lot learning it) then there is more forgetting.

Question 3

Evaluation of the retrieval failure theory

supporting evidence, questioning context effects, recall vs recognition

Answer 3

+ An impressive range of research supports the retrieval Phalia exclamation for forgetting. The studies by Godden & Baddeley and Carter & Cassaday are just two examples of this research. In fact, one prominent memory researcher Eysenck (2010), goes so far as to argue that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM. This is a strength because supporting evidence increases the validity of an explanation. This is especially true when the evidence shows that retrieval Phalia powers in real life situations as well as in the highly controlled conditions of the lab.

• Baddeley (1997) argues that context effects are actually not very strong, especially in real life. Different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen. For example, it would be hard to find an environment as different from land as underwater. In contrast, learning something in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to result in much forgetting because these environments are generally not different enough. This is a limitation because it means that the real-life applications of retrieval failure due to contextual cues don’t actually explain much forgetting.
• The context effect may be related to the kind of memory being tested. Godden & Baddeley (1980) replicated their underwater experiment but used a recognition test instead of recall – participants had to say whether they recognised a word read to them from the list, instead of retrieving it for themselves. When recognition was tested there was no context-dependent effect; performance was the same in all 4 conditions from their original experiment. This is a further limitation of context effects because it means that the presence/absence of cues only affects memory test in a certain way.