AO1

• Cues are things that allow us to access a memory.
• Insufficient cues is when a cue is absent or cues are different at retrieval, which appears as forgetting but it is retrieval failure.
• Tulving's encoding specifity principle states that a cue has to be present at encoding and then again at retrieval. If they are different or absent at retrieval, there will be some forgetting.
• There are two types of forgetting; context dependent and state dependent.
• Context-dependent forgetting is when the context in which the memory occurred becomes an external cue, such as the weather or location.
• Abernathy (1940) investigated a class of psychology students and whether context-dependent forgetting, specifically location, really affected recall and led to retrieval failure. A group of psychology students were taught in the same room by the same lecturer every week, however at the end of the week some were tested in the same room and some in a different room. They found that those tested in a different room had worse performance in the test, which shows context dependent forgetting.
• State-dependent forgetting is when the state that someone is in becomes an external cue. This is their emotional or physical state, such as being sad or drunk.
• Carter and Cassady investigated state-dependent forgetting by giving ppts a anti-histamine which made them drowsy, altering their normal state (DV). They gave ppts a list of words to recall in 4 different conditions; learn on drug, recall off; learn on drug, recall on; learn off drug, recall on and learn off drug and recall off. They found that those who had different states at learning and recall had worse list recall. This shows state-dependent forgetting and that absent cues leads to retrieval failure.