Retrieval Failure

• What are cues?


  a ‘trigger’ of info allowing access to memory
• What is retrieval failure?

  not having necessary cues to access a memory, the memory is still available but inaccessible unless a suitable cue is provided.
• What is the Encoding Specificity Principle (ESP)?

  • Endel Tulving - discovered a consistent pattern to findings which he summarised as the ESP
  • This states that a helpful cue has to be present at coding AND present at retrieval, if it‘s not or the coding/retrieval cue is different there will be some forgetting.
  • some cues are coded meaningfully using mnemonic techniques
  • there’s also 2 types of non-meaningful cues:
  • Context-Dependant Forgetting where recall depends on external cue
  • State-Dependant Forgetting where recall depends on an internal cue
• Research on Context-Depend forgetting

  • Godden and Baddeley - studied deep sea divers working underwater to see if training on land/sea hindered their work. They did this by making them learn a list of words and asking them to recall it in 4 different conditions
  • Findings: Accurate recall was 40% lower in non-matching conditions
  • Conclusion: external cues available at learning were different from cues at recall - leading to retrieval failure
• Research on State-dependant forgetting

  • Carter and Cassaday - gave antihistamine drugs to participants making them feel drowsy, creating an internal physiological state different from ‘normal’ state of being alert/awake. Participants had to learn a lost of words and recall them, this again created 4 conditions
  • Findings: conditions had a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on memory test was significantly worse.
  • Conclusion: so when cues are absent, there’s more forgetting
• A03 for Forgetting: Retrieval Failure

  • Real-world application: retrieval cues help overcome forgetting, Baddeley suggests going back to the place you first had a cue to help get a retrieval cue.
  • impressive range of research, Eysenck and Keane argue retrieval failure is main reason for forgetting from LTM. BUT Baddeley argues retrieval failure due to lack of contextual cues dont explain forgetting
  • Recall vs recognition: conetxt effects may depend on type of memory being tested (Godden and Baddeley)
  • This is a limited explanation for forgetting bc it only applies when recalling not recognising