Retrieval failure evaluation

Question 1

Strength 1

Answer 1

Lot of research evidence that supports the theory

For example, from Godden and Baddeley (1975) and Carter and Cassaday (1998)

These studies have shown support for context and state dependent forgetting respectively, indicating that the context and state we learn info in can act as a cue to help us to remember that info when we need to remember it

This increase validity of retrieval failure as an explanation as it demonstrates that retrieval failure occurs in real life situations as well as controlled lab conditions

Question 2

Strength 2

Answer 2

Context related cues have useful real life applications

E..g people often report experiences where they were upstairs, then went downstairs for an item but when they got downstairs they could not remember what that item was. Upon going back upstairs, they remember what they were looking for

In everyday life, if we are struggling to remember something, it may be worth trying to recall the environment in which we learnt it

This is a basic principle of the cognitive interview, which is a method used by police, to get eyewitnesses to recall more information about crimes, using a technique called content reinstatement

Question 3

Limit 1

Answer 3

Context effects may only occur when memory is tested in certain ways

Godden and Baddeley (1980) replicated their underwater experiment, using a recognition test instead of recall

They found that there were no context dependent effects, participants performance was the same in all 4 conditions regardless of whether or not the environmental contexts for learning and recall were matched

This limits retrieval failure as an explanation as it suggest that the presence or absence of contextual cues only affects memory when you test recall rather than recognition

Question 4

Limit 2

Answer 4

There is a problem with the encoding specificity principle

The ESP cannot be tested and this leads to circular reasoning

When a cue leads to successful recall of a word, we assume that the cue was encoded at the time of learning; when a cue doesnt lead to successful recall of a word, we assume the cue was not encoded at the time of learning

However, these are just assumptions and there is no way to test whether or not the cue has really been coded