Memory: Forgetting Flashcards
What is Trace Decay?
Based on the idea that info is physically represented as a memory trace (e.g. arrangement of neurons)
- the trace is fragile and disintegrates if not constantly refreshed
- after about 20 seconds, the trace has decayed completely and recall is no longer possible.
What is displacement?
The idea that STM has a strictly limited capacity for info. If STM is full and new info is registered, then some existing info is pushed out or even overwritten
What is interference?
One memory disturbs the ability to recall another. Might result in forgetting or distorting one or the other or both.
- more likely to happen if the memories are similar
What is proactive interference?
Previously learnt info interferes with the new info your are trying to store.
-e.g. you have difficult learning the names of your new students and instead keep remembering the names of students from last year
What is retroactive interference?
A new memory interferes with older ones
- e.g. you have difficulties remembering the names of the students last year because you have new students this year.
How did Baddeley and Hitch’s real life study support forgetting?
- asked rugby players to recall the names of teams recently played. Most players had missed some games due to injury etc.
- found that recall for the last game was equally good whether that game was played some time ago or last week. This shows that incorrect recall was not due to decay, but related to the number of intervening games.
What is the evaluation of the real life interference theory?
+ shows interference operates in at least some real life situations - increasing the validity of the theory.
- lacks generalisability (only studied rugby men)
+ good ecological validity
What’s an alternative theory of interference?
Tulving (1966) - ptps asked to free recall word lists they had previously learned - recall tested on several different occasions.
- generally, ptps recalled about 50% of the words, but not always the same 50%.
- suggests that words had not disappeared but had actually been inaccessible.
- this is contrary to what interference theory suggests
- So… an alternative theory is that info doesn’t necessarily just disappear in many cases, we just can’t access it.
What is Cue-dependent forgetting?
Explains forgetting in the LTM as a retrieval failure: the info is stored in the LTM but cannot be accessed.
Forgetting is lack of cues:
- context cues and state cues.
This theory proposes that when we learn the info, we also encode the context (external cues) in which we learn the info and the mental state we are in (internal cues). These can act as cues to recall.
What did Godden and Baddeley (1975) study with deep divers?
Divers learnt a list of words either underwater or on land and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land- creating 4 conditions; learn on land - recall on land; learn on land - recall underwater; learn underwater - recall on land; learn underwater - recall underwater.
Found accurate recall was 40% lower in non-matching - the external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure.
What’s the evaluation of Godden and Baddeley?
- limited ecological validity.
- groups who learnt and recalled in different areas were disrupted by having to move, yet the other groups weren’t
+ controlled study so can be reliably tested
+ Abernathy further supported this by finding students did better in tests if they took place in the same place they learnt the material and by the same teacher.
What is state dependent forgetting and a study that supports it?
When your mood or physiological state during recall is different from the mode you were in when you were learning
Goodwin et al (1969) - 48 male medical students ptped in a day 1 training session and day 2 testing. Randomly assigned 4 groups.
- 1; sober both days (SS)
- 2; intoxicated both days (AA)
- 3; intoxicated day 1, sober day 2 (AS)
- 4; sober day 1, intoxicated day 2 (SA)
4 tasks - an avoidance task, verbal rote-learning task, word association test, and a picture recognition task.
More errors made on day 2 in the AS and SA condition than the AA or SS conditions, yet not the case for photo recognition. The SS ptps were best in all tasks.
Supports the state dependent memory theory as the performance was best in the ptps who were sober or intoxicated both days (same state)
What’s some evaluation of Godden and Baddeleys study?
- limited ecological validity.
- ptps may ave shown demand characteristic - guessed the aim of the study
+ high control, so reliability can be tested
+ supporting study is Overton (1964) with 2 groups of rats, one group given mild barbiturate, the other didn’t. Placed in a simple maze and taught to escape the electrical shock. When the drug group was placed back in the maze without the drug, they could not remember how to escape, yet were given the drug again they could recall how to escape the shocks.
+ real life application with eye witness testimonies - ask ptps to explain their mood/emotional state when the incident took place.
What is retrieval failure due to the absence of cues and the Encoding Specifically Principle (ESP)?
The reason people may forget info may be due to insufficient cues.
Tulving reviewed research into retrieval failure and found a pattern he called the ESP. This states that a cue (if helpful) has to be both:
- present at encoding (when learn the material)
- present at retrieval (when recall it)
If cues available at encoding and retrieval are different (or absent) then there will be some forgetting.
