Forgetting

Question 1

interference

Answer 1

forgetting occurs when there are two competing memories. when two memories are similar in nature they can become confused to the point that one of the memories if forgotten

Question 2

retroactive interference

Answer 2

when a new memory interferes with recall of an old memory, the old memory is forgotten

Question 3

Ceraso (1967)

Answer 3

• competition of response, older memory is not actually forgotten just misplace. newer memory held in the spot where older memory was (so easier to pick newer memory)
• unlearning theory- new memory actually replaces older memory

Question 4

Proactive interference

Answer 4

when a old memory interferes with the recall of a newer memory

Question 5

what did Waugh and Norman’s study show?

Answer 5

provided evidence for the existence of retroactive interference

Question 6

Waugh and Norman (1965)

Answer 6

• participants given 16 digits to remember
• were given one of these digits then asked to recall the digit before it
• when the digit was towards the end of the list recall was better
• this is due to there being less ‘new’ information to interfere with with the recall of older information

Question 7

what did Underwood and Postman’s experiment show?

Answer 7

provides evidence for the existence of retroactive interference

Question 8

Underwood and Postman (1960)

Answer 8

• two groups were given a list of paired words. the second group were also given a second list which had the same first word of each pair of words, but the second word differed to list one
• participants were then asked to recall list one
• the second group did worse as the newer learning interfered with the recall of the older learning

Question 9

What does Underwood’s research show?

Answer 9

provides evidence for proactive interference

Question 10

Underwood (1957)

Answer 10

• reviewed studies of forgetting word list
• when participants were given 15 or more lists, they were only able to recall 15% of the last list in comparison to 80% when just one list was required
• this supports the idea that earlier learning affects the recall of later material

Question 11

what di Kane and Engle’s research show?

Answer 11

provides evidence to show consideration for individual differences when considering the impact of interference

Question 12

Kane and Engle (2000)

Answer 12

• divided participants into high and low working memory spans after completing a problem solving task whilst learning new word lists
• they were then tested for proactive interference by learning three word lists, those with poorer working memory showed more proactive interference for lists 2 and 3
• list 1 interfered with their later recall

Question 13

retrieval failure

Answer 13

we never forget anything but just lack the ‘cues’ needed to retrieve the information

Question 14

context dependent

Answer 14

being in a different place at recall, to that of learning might mean we cannot access the original memory e.g. you could relate a certain sound to a memory

Question 15

state dependent

Answer 15

being in a different mood/ state of arousal at recall, to that of learning might mean we cannot access the original memory

Question 16

category dependent

Answer 16

a lack of organisation (depending on how we ‘filed’ our cues) might mean we cannot access the memory - encoding specifity principle

Question 17

encoding specifity principle

Answer 17

• Tulving and Thomson (1973) proposed that memory is most effective if information that was present at encoding (when we learn the material) is also available at the time of retrieval (when we are recalling it)
• this is evidence of cues that have been explicitly or implicitly encoded at the the time of learning and have a meaningful link to the learning material
  -implicit = music weather etc
  -explicit = lists etc

Question 18

Tulving

Answer 18

memories better when the cues given at the time of recall match the encoding used at the time of learning

Question 19

Barclay et al (1974)

Answer 19

word ‘PIANO’ was encoded a something ‘heavy’, so giving participants the cue ‘a musical instrument’ would not help recall

Question 20

why does forgetting occur?

Answer 20

if the cue used at encoding is not present at the time of retrieval

Question 21

Evaluation (-)

Answer 21

• impractical, it is often impossible to match the state of learning with the state of recall
• unethical

Question 22

Evaluation (+)

Answer 22

• Abernathy (1940) tested students every week throughout a course, she found that recall was best in the teaching room with their teacher present
• Goodwin et al (1969) gave medical students alcohol and the information to learn, the information was best remembered when they got drunk again
• Godden and Baddeley hade divers learn words either on land or under water, they recalled the most in the location the words were learnt