Forgetting: Retrieval failure

• Retrieval failure suggests that forgetting occurs when the ‘cues’ (triggers of information recollection) present at the time of encoding the information are not present at the time of recall. This describes Tulving’s ‘encoding specificity principle’ (ESP).
• Encoding Specificity Principle- states that if a cue is to help us to recall information it has to be present at encoding (when we learn the material) and at retrieval (when we are recalling it). If the cues available at encoding and retrieval are different (or if cues are absent at retrieval) there will be some forgetting.
• There are two types of cues: context and state
• Context-dependent forgetting: can occur when the environment during recall is different from the environment you were in when you were learning
• Context-dependent forgetting: -Godden and Baddeley (1975) found that with deep-water divers, recall at the ‘matching’ conditions (e.g. word list learnt underwater and recalled underwater) was significantly larger than the non-matching conditions. Therefore, there were 4 conditions in total, involving underwater and on-land encoding and recall
• Results of Godden and Baddeley's study: in two of these conditions the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched, whereas in the other two, they did not. Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions. The external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure.
• Conclusion of Godden and Baddeley's study: the results show that the context acted as a cue to recall as the participants recalled more words when they learnt and recalled the words in the same environment than when they learnt and recalled the words in different environments.
• Further supporting evidence (context-dependent forgetting) -Marian and Fausey (1986) found that memory for a story was better if the language in which it was presented and the language that was used to test memory were the same. Participants who heard the story in one language (Spanish) and were asked questions in another language (English) were less accurate. This was because the environmental cues present at encoding were absent at recall.
• State-dependent forgetting occurs when your mood or physiological state during recall is different from the mood you were in when you were learning.
• State-dependent forgetting:-This was demonstrated by Carter and Cassaday (1998), using a similar methodology as Godden and Baddeley, but with anti-histamines instead to change the internal cues at the time of encoding and recall. The researchers found 40% higher rates of accurate recall in the matching conditions, compared to the non-matching conditions.
• Results of Carter and Cassaday's study: In the conditions where there was a mismatch between the internal state of learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse. So when the cues are absent, then there is more forgetting.
• Conclusion of Carter and Cassaday's study: the results show that the state acted as a cue to recall as the participants recalled more words when they learnt and recalled the words in the same state than when they learnt and recalled the words in different states.
• One strength of context-dependent forgetting is that there is real-life application, although it is suggested that context-related cues are not significant in forgetting, Baddeley suggests that it is still worth paying attention to. Suggested that we do tend to experience CDF in everyday life. E.g. when you are downstairs and think you have to go upstairs to get something, but once you get upstairs you forget, and then remember once you get downstairs. Suggests that recall improves when we revisit the context in which cues were learnt.
• A weakness of context as an explanation for forgetting is that context generally doesn't have a strong impact in real-life situations. For example, Baddeley suggests that the difference in context has to be extreme for an effect to be seen of recall, i.e. land and underwater is an extreme difference in context. This is a problem in this context that does not usually occur in everyday life. Instead, if you learn information and recall it in another way, the effects of context are limited. This shows that context-dependent forgetting may be limited in real-life situations
• Another limitation of CDF is that its effect depends on the type of memory being tested. E.g. Godden and Baddeley replicated their underwater study but instead used a recognition test rather than recall, they did this by having pts learn the list of words and recognise which words they learned, meaning that the words were given to them rather than using recall. In all four conditions, the performance was the same (no context-dependent effect).It's a limitation because this suggests that CDF is only effective in some memory tasks, no cues only affects memory when it is tested in a certain way.
• Another strength of retrieval failure is that there is research support for the theory such as the study by Godden and Baddeley (1975) to suggest that cues can affect recall of information. This strengthens the theory because it increases the validity. Especially when retrieval failure occurs in real life as well as in highly controlled lab conditions.