Godden & Baddeley - Retrieval failure

• Godden and Baddeley (1975)


  Researchers who conducted an experiment on the importance of setting for retrieval
• Godden and Baddeley (1975) experiment

  1. Baddeley asked 18 deep-sea divers to memorize a list of 36 unrelated words

  2. One group did this on the beach, the other group underwater

  3. Half of the beach learners remained on the beach, the rest had to recall underwater

  4. Half of the underwater group remained there, the others had to recall on the beach
• The results show that the external context acted as a cue to recall as the participants recalled more words when they learnt and recalled the words in the same environment than when they learned and recalled the words in different environments
• Godden and Baddeley (1975) experiment

  • Limited ecological validity because the environment was familiar to the divers but the task was artificial
  • The groups who learnt and recalled in different environments were disrupted whereas the groups who learnt and recalled in the same environment were not disrupted
• The experiment was controlled so it can be replicated to test reliability
• Abernathy (1940)


  Researcher who found that students performed better in tests if the tests took place in the same room as the learning of the material had taken place, and were administered by the same instructor who had taught the information
• The studies carried out do not take into account the meaning of the material and the level of motivation of the person when learning the information
• Theory of contextual cues

  Can be applied to real life, e.g. police uses this theory in cognitive interview by asking witnesses to describe the context in which the incident took place to enhance their recall
• This theory is difficult to disprove if recall does not occur as it is unclear whether the information is not stored or because the right cue is not provided (circular argument)