state dependant forgetting

• Explain the procedure of Carter and Cassaday (1998)

  > They gave anti-histamine drugs (for hay-fever) to their ppts

  > The anti-histamine drugs had a mild drowsy effect

  > This created an internal physiological state different from the 'normal' state of being awake and alert.

  > The ppts had to learn lists of words and then recall the information, again creating four conditions:

  1) Learn on drug - recall when on drug

  2) Learn on drug - recall when not on drug

  3) Learn not on drug - recall not on drug

  4) Learn not on drug - recall on drug

  
• Explain the findings of Carter and Cassaday (1998)

  > In the conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was significantly worse.

  > So when the cues are absent (for example, you are drowsy when recalling the information but had been alert when encoding it) then there is more forgetting.