Retrieval Failure

• Retrieval failure - A form of forgetting which occurs when we don't have the necessary cues to access memory.
• The Encoding Specificity Principle states that if a cue is present at encoding and at retrieval, we are more likely to remember
• One strength of the retrieval failure explanation for forgetting is it has research support.

  For example, Godden and Baddeley argued that if the external cues available at learning differed from the ones at recall this led to retrieval failure.

  This is a strength for the explanation because field studies take place in real-life settings but offer some control elements of a traditional lab experiment therefore increasing the ecological validity of the explanation
• Two types of cue-dependent forgetting

  • Context- dependent forgetting: based on environmental cues (external)
  • State-dependent forgetting: based on physiological cues (internal)
• A weakness is that ESP can't be tested. This leads to circular reasoning. In experiments where a cue produces successful recall of a word we assume the cue must've been encoded at the time of learning, however this is an assumption. This is a weakness of the ESP as it means there's no way to independently establish whether a cue has really been encoded.
• A strength of the retrieval failure explanation for forgetting is its real life applications. For example, going downstairs to get something but then forgetting what you wanted, going back up & remembering. This is a strength as the results can be generalised past the lab, providing the explanation with more validity