Evaluation

• Supporting evidence

  • Baddeley and Godden (context)

  
  

  • showed that context can act as retrieval cues
  • divers recalled 50% more words when they were asked to recall in the same environment as learning compared to in a different environment
• Supporting evidence

  Abernathy (context)

  
  

  • tested context cues
  • some students were tested in their teaching room by their usual instructor and some students were tested in a different room by a different instructor
  • the recall rate for the first students was the best
  • showed that familiar things act as memory cues
• Supporting evidence

  Overton(State)

  • supports the idea that emotional state can act as a retrieval cue
  • found that people who have blackouts when drinking heavily cannot remember when sober
  • but if they get drunk again they can then remember the information learned
• Supporting evidence

  Darley et al (State)

  • supports role of emotional factors
  • Ps who hid money when high on marijuana were less able to recall where the money was when they were not high than when they were high again
• Limitations


  • Godden and Baddeley's study is a field experiment which is more natural than a lab experiment
  • however the Ps were a small sample of deep sea divers which is not representative of the wider population
  • furthermore we are not asked to learn random words underwater which lacks mundane realism
• Alternative explanations


  • trace decay (information may not have been received as it would have been lost due to decay)
• Value


  • the theory is useful as it can be used to help police reinstate the mood and context for their eyewitnesses in order to improve the reliability of their testimonies
  • it is used in interviewing techniques by the police as mental reinstatement of context and forms the cognitive interview
  • can also be used in an educational context