Memory: Explanation Of Forgetting - Retrieval Failure Flashcards
What Is Retrieval Failure?
- Form of forgetting.
- It occurs when we do not have the necessary cues to access memories.
- The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided.
What Is A Cue?
- A ‘trigger’ of information.
- The cues may be meaningful or may be indirectly linked by being encoded at the time of learning. They may be external (environment context) or internal (mood or state).
What Is Encoding Specificity Principle (ESP)?
- Recall of information is the best when there is a large overlap between information available at the time of the retrieval and the information in the memory trace (in the learning).
- Tulving found a consistent pattern that cues need to present at encoding of information and retrieval.
What Is Context-Dependent Forgetting?
- A form of forgetting where recall occurs in a different external setting.
- Retrieval cues may be based on text (the setting/situation which information is encoded and retrieved including the way information is presented).
What Is State-Dependant Forgetting?
- A form of forgetting where recall occurs in a different internal setting to coding.
- Memory will be best when a person psychological or physical state is similar at encoding and retrieval.
Tulving And Pearlstone: Investigated Retrieval Cues:
Aim: Test importance of retrieval cues.
Procedure: Participants were told to learn a list of words from various categories. Then asked to recall the words with or without the category names.
Findings: Those who weren’t given the category names recalled significantly fewer words than participants given to them.
Conclusion: It important that cues are present at the learning and retrieval in order to retrieve most information.
Godden And Pearlstone: Investigated Cue Dependant Forgetting
Aim: To investigate cue dependant forgetting.
Procedure: Divers learnt a list of words either on land or underwater and then asked to recall the words either on land or underwater.
Findings: In two conditions the environment context of learning and recall matched whereas the others did not. Accuracy was 40% lower when in the non-matching conditions, so when external cue was different there was retrieval failure.
Conclusion: External cues available at learning help to trigger memories if they are also there at recall.
Carter And Cassaday: Investigated State-Dependant Forgetting
Aim: Investigate state-dependant forgetting.
Procedure: Mild sedative were giving to the participants which made them slightly drowsy. They then had to learn lists of words and passages and recall information either when they were drowsy or in ‘normal’ state.
Findings: In conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance was significantly worse.
Conclusion: Memory works better when the psychological state is similar to encoding and retrieval however when different, cues are absent.
Strength: Range Of Experiments Support The Idea Of Retrieval Failure
- A range of lab, field and natural experiments support the idea of retrieval failure.
- Studies by Godden and Baddeley and Carter and Cassaday are two examples of this type of research.
- Research support increases the likelihood that is a valid explanation for forgetting.
Strength: Real Life Application From Research Into Retrieval Failure
- There are real life applications from research into retrieval.
- E.g when you are upstairs and go downstairs to get something however once downstairs you forget why you are there. Then go back upstairs then realise what you went down.
- This is due to context dependent forgetting where we have to be in similar situations where information is encoded in oder to activate cues to recall.
- When wanting to remember something it is worth remembering where we learnt it - basic principle in cognitive interview.
Weakness: Context Forgetting May Not Be As Influential
- Context effect is not as influential when applied to real life.
- Baddeley argued that context effects isn’t as strong in real life.
- Context must be extremely different before any effect is seen eg land and water. The contrast learning in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to result i forgetting as the environments aren’t that different.
- Forgetting due to retrieval failure does not fully explain forgetting in the real world.
Weakness: Hard To Test Context-Dependant Forgetting
- May be impossible to test context dependant forgetting.
- In experiments where a cue produces successful recall of the word we assume that the cue must have been encoded at the time of learning.
- If the cue does not produce the recall we assume it was not encoded.
- However these are just assumptions as there is no way to independently establish whether or not a cue has been encoded.
- Therefore it lowers the internal validity of experiments as there is no way to measure ESP effects on retrieval failure.
