forgetting- retrieval failure

• ao1:

  retrieval failure suggests that forgetting occurs when cues (things that serve as a reminder) are present at the time of encoding the information but aren't present when trying to recall the information. this is the encoding specificity principle by Tulving. Cues may be meaningfully linked to the material to be remembered or not be meaningful. like environmental cues.
• paragraph 2

  cues can be context dependant (environmental factors at encoding not matching those present at recall). This was demonstrated by Godden and Baddeley with divers when they learnt and recalled words in the same environment recall was larger than non matching conditions.Another type of cue is state dependant cues which relates to a persons mental state demonstrated by Godwin et al who asked volunteers to learn word lists when drunk or sober he found that information learned when sober is best recalled when sober
• strength: research support

  Eysenck has suggested that retrieval failure may be one of the main reasons that we forget information from the LTM. This, alongside the strictly-controlled conditions of a lab experiment (reducing the biasing effects of extraneous and confounding variables), increases the validity of retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting, due to more confidence being placed in these conclusions on the basis of such experimental designs.
• strength: real world application

  This can be usefull when you need to improve recall like when revising for an exam. Smith showed that just thinking of the room where you did the original learning was as effective as being in the same room at the time of retrieval. Another application of retrieval cues is in the cognitive interview when your asked to imagine yourself back to the scene of the crime. This is a strength as it's a helpful strategies for improving recall in real world situations
• weakness: Baddeley's research isn't accurate

  Godden and Baddeley repeated their underwater, experiment (1975) but tested for the recognition of learnt words, as opposed to recall, and found no significant difference in accuracy of recognition between the matched and non-matched conditions. This suggests that retrieval failure may only explain forgetting for some types of memory, tested in specific ways and under certain conditions, so is not a universal explanation. Therefore suggests that the findings from studies of retrieval failure suffer from poor generalisability.
• weakness: retrival cues dont always work

  One limitation is that retrieval cues do not always work this is because of the outshining hypothesis where a cues effectiveness is reduced by the presence pf better cues. According to Smith and vela context affects are largely eliminated when learning meaningful material

  k-this suggests that the theory cant necessarily be usefully applied in the real world because they do not explain all types of forgetting