Retrieval Failure

• A cue is a hint or trigger that can help retrieve a memory
• Cues can be meaningful or indirect

  An indirect cue could be external (linked to enviroment)

  Internal (linked to emotions/mood)
• If there are not enough cues a person may forget certain memories, this is called retrieval failure
• Encoding-specificity Principle

  In order for a cue to be helpful in remembering information, then it must be:

  • Present during encoding
  • Present during retrieval
• If the cue does not meet the criteria then information may be forgotten
• Many cues have a meaningful link to the information forming the memory. Other cues can be encoded at the time of learning that are not meaningful
• Context Cues

  These are associated with the enviroment/surroundings
• Research carried out by Godden and Baddeley investigated the effect of contextual cues on deep sea divers:

  The sample used 18 participants from a uni diving club and were asked to learn a set of words either on land or underwater. There were four conditions to the independent variable

  1. learning words on land/recalling on land
  2. learning on land/recalling underwater
  3. learning underwater/recalling underwater
  4. learning underwater/recalling on land
• The results of Godden and Baddeley showed that words learned underwater were better recalled underwater and words learned on land were better recalled on land.

  So, context cues are key for retrieval to happen
• State dependent forgetting occurs when recall depends on an internal cue. e.g. feelings/emotions and the physiological state of the person
• Goodwin et al investigated the effect of recall when participants were under the influence of alcohol or when they were sober. Male participants learnt a set of words either drunk or sober and were asked to recall the set of words 24 hours later when either drunk or sober again. The results showed that information learned when under the influence of alcohol was recalled better when they were under the influence of alcohol
• A strength of retrieval failure is that there is good real-world applications to this theory. e.g. studying for exams should be conducted in the same room in which the exam is to take place to aid recall. Means there is good external validity
• A limitation is that Baddeley's experiment is not very strong in real-world situations. It would be difficult to find such contrasting contexts as land and water in real life. This means that retrieval failure due to a lack of contextual cues may not be a good model to explain forgetting
• Many of the studies involve learning lists of words which is an artificial task, meaning that the studies lack ecological validity and real-world application