Retrieval Failure Flashcards
There is research support for retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting.
E – Godden and Baddeley found divers were 40% less accurate in their recall of a word list when the environments they learnt the lists in (underwater or on land) did not match the environment of recall, compared to when they did match.
E – Just as the encoding specificity principle would predict, when the context-dependent cues that were available to the participants at encoding did not match the cues at retrieval (e.g., learning underwater and recalling on land), forgetting was much more likely to occur than when these cues were available at encoding and retrieval (e.g., learning and recalling underwater). However, in real life, people learn meaningful information, not artificial word lists. By testing participants on these lists of words, Godden and Baddeley have reduced the ecological validity of their study, making it hard to generalize their findings to real-world situations of forgetting.
limitation of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting as it may not apply to all types of forgetting.
For example, researchers replicated the Godden and Baddeley experiment but with the change that participants were tested on their recognition* of words rather than their recall. In this version, participants all achieved the same score, regardless of their condition.
E – This finding shows how forgetting involving recognition is unaffected by the extent to which context-dependent cues available at encoding are also available at retrieval. This suggests retrieval failure may offer a limited explanation for forgetting, as it only explains forgetting involving recall. However, since Godden and Baddeley’s study focused only on context-dependent forgetting, this limitation may not apply to other types of retrieval failure, such as state-dependent or semantic-dependent forgetting.
strength of retrieval failure’s explanation for forgetting is that it has real-life applications
E – Using retrieval failure, researchers developed a police interview called the cognitive interview*. This interview, which uses techniques like asking the interviewee to report everything that happened. This helps the interviewee generate retrieval cues, and this has been shown to provide more correct information than standard police interviews.
E – This illustrates that retrieval failure has value beyond just providing an academic explanation for forgetting. It shows that the theory can lead to the development of useful applications that can provide a benefit to society. Furthermore, the fact that the cognitive interview appears to be successful provides indirect support for retrieval failure, as it suggests the theoretical principles that support the cognitive interview may also be valid, meaning retrieval failure is an effective explanation for forgetting.
