retrieval failure

• Research on state-dependent forgetting

  Carter and Cassady gave the participants antihistamine drugs which created a drowsiness effect on the participants. This then created 4 conditions. These were drug/ no drug when encoding occurred and drug/ n o drug at retrieval these could be the same or different. The findings and conclusions were that when the mental/ internal states were completely different the participants did significantly worse on the memory test as the cues were absent therefore more forgetting occurred.
• Research on context-dependent forgetting

  Godden and Baddely studied deep sea divers to see if training on land helped or hindered their work underwater. divers learnt a list of words underwater or on land and then asked to recall them underwater/ land .created 4 environments/ conditions which had taken place. These conditions were encoding on land/ underwater and retrieval on land/underwater, where both of the conditions were the same or different. If the environments were different there was 40% less accuracy, as the cues were different from when encoding occurred. 
• Encoding specificity principle

  Endel Tulving 1983 he discovered a consistent pattern to his findings. He called this the encoding specific principle, which states that if a cue is going to be used it has to be both present and encoding and retrieval. If the cues available at encoding and retrieval are different then there will be some forgetting. Cues can be encoded meaningfully such as mnemonics and non meaningfully such as context-dependent forgetting and state-dependent forgetting.
• limitation is recall vs recognition as it highly depends on the type of memory being tested. Godden and Baddeley replicated their underwater and land test in 1980 but instead of testing the participants' recall they tested their recognition using the same principle through a list of words but slightly different. When the recognition was tested there was no context-dependent forgetting effect as all 4 conditions had the same/ similar result. This suggests that retrieval failure is a limited explanation for forgetting as it only applies to recall of information and not recognition.
• strength is the research support as it explains retrieval failure. Studies from Godden, Baddeley, Carter, and Cassadybecause they show that lack of relevant cues can lead to context and state dependent forgetting. Memory researchers Keane and Eysenck 2010 retrieval failure are the main reason for forgetting of the LTM. This shows that retrieval failure is the main reason for forgetting in everyday life and in lab experiments
• However Baddeley 1997 claims that context effects are not strong in everyday life especially. Different contexts have to be very different to see an effect. An example is learning something in one room and then recalling it in another is not different enough to see an effect. This means that retrieval due to lack of contextual cues may not actually explain forgetting in everyday life.
• strength rwa as the retrieval cues can help overcome forgetting in everyday life. cues not have a strong effect on forgetting, Baddeley suggests that we pay attention to them. An example is in Beamish museum they have smells from the around the 1950s which can be used as a cue from a person  with dementia to help aid the remembrance of their childhood. When forgetting it is best to make the effort to recall the information where you first learnt it as the same cues are present. This means that research can remind us of strategies that we use everyday to improve your recall.