forgetting occurs in the absence of appropriate cues
encoding specificity principle - for a cue to be helpful in recall, it must be present at encoding and retrieval, if the cues at encoding and retrieval are different, or the cues are completely absent at retrieval, there will be some forgetting
it may appear as though we have forgotten the information, but the memory can be inaccessible due to the lack of cues
context dependent forgetting
being in a different context/place may inhibit memory, the external cues available at learning are different to those at recall which leads to retrieval failure - lack of external cues
state dependent forgetting
being in a different mood/mental state of arousal at recall may inhibit memory, the internal cues are learning are different from those at learning, which leads to retrieval failure - lack of internal context clues
Baddeley and Godden (1975)
accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching context conditions
