explanations for forgetting- retrieval failure

• What is retrieval failure?

  A form of forgetting which occurs when we dont have the necessary cues to access a memory. The memory is available but not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided.
• What are cues?


  'Triggers' of information that allow us to access a memory. Such cues may be meaningful or indirectly linked by being encoded at the time of learning. Indirect cues may be external (environmental context) or internal (mood/degree of drunkenness).
• Who proposed the encoding specificity principle? What is it?

  Endel Tulving (1983). After reviewing research into retrieval failure Tulving noticed a consistent pattern to the findings which he summarised in what he called the encoding specificity principle (ESP).
• What does the ESP state?

  If a cue is going to be helpful, it has to be both present at encoding (when we learn the material) and present at retrieval (when we are recalling it). It follows from this that if the cues available at encoding and retrieval are different, or entirely absent at retrieval, there will be some forgetting. Some cues are encoded at the time of learning in a meaningful way and can be used in many mnemonic techniques. Other cues are also encoded at the time of learning in a non meaningful way.
• What are the two examples of non meaningful cues?

  Context-dependent forgetting (recall depends on external cues like weather) and state-dependent forgetting (research depends on internal cues like being upset/drunk).
• Describe research (procedure and findings/conclusions) on context-dependent forgetting?

  Godden and Baddeley (1975) studied deep sea divers who were made to learn a list of words either on land or underwater and were then asked to recall the words either on land or underwater. So in total there were four conditions: those who learnt and recalled in the same place (either on land or underwater), those who learnt on land then recalled underwater and those who learnt underwater and recalled on land.

  -It was found that accurate recall was 40% lower in the non matching conditions compared with the matching ones. They concluded that external cues available at learning were different from the ones available at recall which led to retrieval failure.
• Describe research (procedure and findings/conclusions) on state-dependent forgetting?

  Procedure- Goodwin (1969) wanted to do a memory retrieval task on people when they were drunk. 48 male medical students were asked to perform four memory tasks either sober or after drinking alcohol. Findings- In these tasks, learning transfer was better when the subject in question was intoxicated for both learning and recall then when they changed states in between.
• AO3: describe the real life application of research on context-dependent forgetting?

  The idea that external cues, such as weather and place, can influence recall positively is used in a practical way by the police when conducting interviews with eye witnesses. They often use a technique called cognitive interview which asks eyewitnesses to recall every detail and think about the context of the crime, such as the weather. The idea is to increase recall in eye witnesses by recreating the situation it was witnessed in. They have also asked the witnesses to revisit the scene of the crime in order to prompt recall. This increases the value of the retrieval failure explanation.
• AO3: limitation- limited explanation. What did Baddeley say about context effects?

  Baddeley argues that context effects are actually not very strong, especially in everyday life. Different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen. For example, it would be hard to find an environment as different from land and water (Godden and Baddeley). In contrast, learning something in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to result in much forgetting because these environments are generally not different enough. This means that retrieval failure due to lack of contextual cues (context dependent forgetting) may not actually explain much everyday forgetting.
• AO3: limitation, describe how context effects may depend substantially on the type of memory being tested and how this limits retrieval failure as an explanation for forgetting?

  Godden and Baddeley replicated their underwater experiment but used a recognition test instead of a recall- participants had to say whether they recognised a word read to them from a list, instead of retrieving it for themselves. When recognition was tested, there was no context dependent effect, performance was the same in all four conditions. This suggests that retrieval failure is a limited explaination for forgetting because it only applies when a person has to recall information rather than recognise it.