AO3

• Research on context-dependent cues

  • Godden and Baddeley (1975) studied divers who had learnt new material either on dry land or while underwater. They were then tested on the new information on land or underwater. Recall was worst if tested in a different context to learned and recall was best when tested in the same context as learnt. This suggests that being in the same context as you learned the information in when you are being tested on it aids recall.
• Research on state-dependent cues

  • Overton (1972) Participants learned material whilst either drunk or sober. Then were tested on the material when either drunk or sober. Overton found that recall was worse when participants had a different internal state when tested than they had had when they learnt the information (i.e; learnt it when drunk, tested on it when sober). Recall was best is they had the same internal state at recall as they had when learning. This shows that the state-dependent cues can aid recall of information.
• Having said you could use cues to improve your exam performance, the reality is that this is not very effective

  The issue is that the information you are learning is related to a lot more than just the cues. In most of the research on context effects, participants learn word lists but when you are learning, for example, about Milgram's research into obedience, you are learning about complex associations that are less easily triggered by single cues. This has been called the outshining hypothesis: a cue's effectiveness is reduced by the presence of better cues.
• According to Smith and Vela (2001) context effects are largely eliminated when learning meaningful material. This suggests that while the use of retrieval cues can explain instances of everyday forgetting, they don't explain everything