Retrieval failure

Question 1

What is retrieval failure?

Answer 1

Occurs because there is an absence of cues - explanation for forgetting because there is an issue trying to retrieve a memory which is there but not accessible

Question 2

What is the encoding specificity principle?

Answer 2

Proposed by Tulving and Donald Thomson (1973) - memory is most effective if information was present at encoding and is also available at time of retrieval

Question 3

What is context - dependent forgetting?

Answer 3

Godden and Baddeley (1975) recruited scuba divers and arranged for them to learn a set of words either on land or underwater - there was four conditions - results showed highest recall when initial context matched recall environment

Question 4

What is state-dependent forgetting?

Answer 4

Metal state at the time, Goodiwn et al (1969) asked male volunteers to remember a list of words when they were drunk or sober they then recalled the list 24 hours either drunk or sober, the recall scores show information learned when drunk is more available when drunk

Question 5

What research support is there?

Answer 5

Abernethy (1940) demonstrated importance of context - dependent learning among group of students studying a course

Question 6

Is there any real-world application?

Answer 6

Smith (1979) showed thinking of the room you did the original learning in was as effective as being in the same room at the time of retrieval

Question 7

Why do retrieval cues not always work?

Answer 7

The information you are learning is a lot more than just cues, for example, Smith and Vela (2001) said context effects are eliminated when learning meaningful material