Forgetting Flashcards
Define ‘interferance’.
Interferance is when the recall of one memory blocks the recall of another, causing distorted perceptions of these memories.
What is proactive interferance?
Proactive interferance is when the recall of an old memory blocks the recall of a new memory.
What is retroactive interferance?
Retroactive interferance is when the recall of a new memory blocks the recall of an old memory.
Who demonstrated retroactive interferance and what was their method?
McGeoch and McDonald (1931) found that the more similar the stimuli was to the original stimuli, the accuracy of recall decreased.
Evaluate McGeoch and McDonald’s study (1 disadvantage and 1 advantage).
Disadvantages:
- Low mundane realism - artificial stimuli
Advantages:
- Supporting evidence from Baddeley and Hitch - asked rugby players to recall the names of the teams they’ve played against. The more games they’d played, the worse their recall.
Evaluate Baddeley and Hitch’s rugby players study.
Advantages:
- High mundane realism - meaningful stimuli
- Natural experiment - high ecological validity
Disadvantages:
- Ethnocentric sample - low populaton validity
- Natural experiment - lack of reliablity and less control over extraneous variables.
- Opportunity sample - low population validity
Define ‘retrieval failure’.
Retrieval failure is when the cues that are present during encoding aren’t available during recall, leading to less accurate recall.
What is context-dependent forgetting?
Context-dependant forgetting is when external cues at the time of encoding do not match those present at recall.
What is state-dependant recall and who proposed it?
Carter and Cassaday
State-dependant recall is when the internal cues at the time of encoding aren’t present at the time of recall.
What did Baddeley and Godden’s study find about context-dependant forgetting?
They found that recall, when in matching conditions, was 40% more accurate than in different conditions.
Evaluate Baddeley and Godden’s study on context-dependant forgetting
Disadvantages:
- Low ecological validity - Baddeley argued that it was hard to get polar opposite conditions such as water and land.
- Repeated their study with different stimuli - they found no difference between the different conditions, which suggests that retrieval failure may only explain forgetting in certain types of memory.
Advantages:
- Quantitative data - reliable.
Give supporting evidence for retrieval failure.
- Eysenck - retrieval failure is the main reason we forget information in the LTM - supporting the theory of retrieval failure.
