Retrieval Failure

Question 1

In order for a cue to help us trigger the recall of information, it has to be both present at:

Answer 1

Encoding and retrieval

Question 2

What is encoding?

Answer 2

When we learnt the information

Question 3

What is retrieval?

Answer 3

When we are recalling the information

Question 4

Forgetting occurs when:

Answer 4

If cues available at encoding and retrieval are DIFFERENT or ABSENT

Question 5

Examples of External cues:

Answer 5

Rooms and objects

Question 6

Examples of Internal cues:

Answer 6

Emotional and physiological states

Question 7

When info is encoded, what is encoded alongside?

Answer 7

External cues

Question 8

What happens if there is an absence of these external cues that were encoded alongside the information at the POINT OF RECALL?

Answer 8

Context dependant forgetting

Question 9

Context dependant forgetting:

Answer 9

This occurs if there is an absence of these external cues that were encoded alongside the information at the POINT OF RECALL because there is nothing in the environment that TRIGGERS the recall of memory.

Question 10

What were the names of the two psychologists that investigated Context dependant forgetting?

Answer 10

Godden and Baddley

Question 11

What did Godden and Baddley do in their experiment?

Answer 11

In this study, they made 18 divers learn a list of 36 unrelated words either underwater or on land and then were asked to free recall the words either underwater or on land.

Question 12

What did Godden and Baddley find in their experiment?

Answer 12

In the conditions when the environmental contexts of learning and recall were the SAME participants gave better recall.
In the conditions where the environmental context of learning recall were DIFFERENT, gave worse recall because the external cues available were different from the ones available at recall and this led to retrieval failure.

Question 13

When did participants give BETTER recall?

Answer 13

In the conditions when the environmental contexts of learning and recall were the SAME

Question 14

When did participants give WORSE recall and why?

Answer 14

In the conditions where the environmental context of learning recall were DIFFERENT, because the external cues available were different from the ones available at recall and this led to retrieval failure.

Question 15

What were the three conclusions Godden and Baddley came up with?

Answer 15

• Memory is better when the context for encoding and retrieval is consistent
• When information is encoded in memory, associated contexts are encoded at the same time, e.g places.
• If these contexts are different at the time of retrieval, then information is more likely to be forgotten.

Question 16

What happens if there is an absence of INTERNAL cues at the point of recall?

Answer 16

State dependent forgetting may occur because there is nothing in the internal environment that triggers the recall of the memory.

Question 17

When is memory better?

Answer 17

When the context for encoding and retrieval is consistent

Question 18

A strength of retrieval failure is that there is Research support.

Answer 18

Carter and Cassaday (1998) gave participants either an antihistamine that causes drowsiness (sedative effect) or a placebo and asked them to learn a list of words.
The same participants had to recall the same words while either taking the antihistamine or the placebo. They found that word recall was higher when participants were in the same physiological state (e.g, drowsy-drowsy) compared to when they were in a different physiological state (e.g, normal-drowsy).

This is a strength because it shows that retrieval failure is correct in arguing that when internal cues are consistent between encoding and retrieval, this prevents forgetting.

This increases the validity of retrieval failure.

Question 19

Another strength of retrieval failure is that it has practical applications to the real world.

Answer 19

Abernethy (1940) suggests that when trying to recall information, imagine the context where info was learned (MENTAL REINSTATEMENT) so that you can TRIGGER RECALL. He said this was as effective as actually being in the same context where learning took place (CONTEXT REINSTATEMENT) at the time of recall.

This is a strength because the research provides a way to improve recall in everyday life - as people just need to recreate cues needed to trigger memories and recall info. (e.g help students do better in exams)

This increases the validity of retrieval failure.

Question 20

A weakness of retrieval failure is that it relies on artificial evidence.

Answer 20

In Godden and Baddeley (1975) Driver study, the contexts of learning and recall are extremely different, e.g. land or underwater.
This is a weakness because in everyday real life, they are rarely that drastically different (e.g classroom vs exam hall). This thus shows that retrieval failure can only explain forgetting in drastically different contexts.

Thus, as it cannot apply to real life, the theory that it is the basis of, lacks validity.

Question 21

Another weakness of the retrieval failure is that the extent of forgetting depends on the way the memory is tested and the theory does not account for this.

Answer 21

Godden and Baddeley (1980) replicated their underwater experiment using a recognition task instead of a free recall task.

When recognition was tested, there was no context dependent forgetting. The accuracy of the recall was the same whether the context for learning and recall was the same or different. This is a weakness because it shows that retrieval failure can’t explain forgetting when recognition tasks are utilised. It can only explain when free-recall is used.

As it does not account for the type of recall being utilised, we can consider it being incomplete and invalid.