Retrieval failure

• retrieval failure is the idea that reason people forget information maybe because of insufficient cues. If cues are encoding and retrieval are different or absent, there will be some forgetting.
• encoding specific principle

  This states that a cue, if it’s going to be helpful, has to be present at both encoding and retrieval

  context dependent forgetting - recall depends on external cue

  State dependent forgetting - recall depends on internal cue
• context dependent forgetting study

  godden and baddeley

  Studied deep sea divers who worked underwater

  Divers learned a list of words, either on land or underwater, and then asked to recall either underwater or on land

  This creates four conditions

  When encoding and recall contexts were the same, the mean recall was 12.45

  when encoding and recall contexts were different, mean recall was 40% lower
• State dependent forgetting study

  Gave participants antihistamine drugs which had a mild sedative effect, making participants slightly drowsy

  Participants learnt the list of words either without the drug or with the drug, and then recalled the words, either without the drug or with the drug

  This creates four conditions

  When encoding and recall states were the same recall was significantly better than when they were different
• A strength is that retrieval cues can help to overcome some forgetting in every day situations

  For instance, when you are in one room and thinking I must go and get such-and-such item from another room. You go to the other room only to forget what it was you wanted. But the moment you go back to the first room, you remember again. When we have trouble remembering something, it is probably worth making the effort to recall the environment in which you learned it first.

  This shows how research can remind us of strategies we use in the real world to improve our recall.
• A strength is the research that supports retrieval failure

  godden and baddeley, and carter and cassaday studies that show a lack of relevant cues at recall can lead to forgetting

  psychologists argue that context effects are not very strong, especially in every day life, the different context have to be very different before and an effect is seen, so retrieval failure, due to lack of contextual cues, may not actually explain much in every day for getting
• A limitation is that context effects may depend substantially on the type of memory being tested

  context dependent forgetting study was replicated using a recognition test, instead of recall, participants had to say whether they recognise the word read to them from a list, instead of retrieving it themselves

  When recognition was tested, there was no context dependent effects, performance was the same in all four conditions.

  This suggests that retrieval failure is a limited explanation for forgetting, because it only applies when a person has to recall information rather than recognise it