cause and effect

• There are issues with determining a cause and effect relationship with retrieval failure as an ​

  explanation of forgetting. Nairne (2002) criticised research in this area suggesting that there is merely a ​

  correlation between cues present at the time of encoding and cues present at the time of later ​

  retrieval.
• He goes further and suggests that the cues present do not in themselves cause the retrieval ​

  failure (or success), but are simply associated with it. This would mean that the cue‐dependent (context ​

  and state) explanations of forgetting due to retrieval failure, linear and psychologists are unable to conclude whether a lack of cues actually causes retrieval failure.​

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