Retrieval failure

• Why might we forget information?

  Insufficient cues - when information is initially placed in memory, associated cues are stored at the same time. If these cues are not avaliable at the time of recall, it may lead to retrieval failure (not being able to access memories that are there) and appears as if we have forgotton the information
• What kind of retrieval failures are there?

  Encoding specificity principle (ESP)

  Context - dependent forgetting

  State - dependent forgetting
• Who came up with ESP?

  Tulving (1983)
• What does ESP mean?

  Recall is better when the cues that were present when we learnt something are also present when we recall it, if the cues are absent or different there will be some forgetting. Some cues are linked to the material to be remembered in a meaningful way e.g. 'STM' makes you remember stuff about STM. Others are internal or external (neither meaningful)
• What is context - dependent forgetting?

  Recall takes place in a different environment from where the learning took place
• Who tested context - dependent forgetting?

  Godden & Baddeley (1975)
• What was the procedure of Baddeley and Godden's study?

  Divers learnt a list of words either underwater for on land and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land, creating 4 conditions
• What did Godden and Baddeley find?

  Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions (e.g land then water or vice versa). The external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall and this lead to retrieval failure.
• What does state-dependent forgetting mean?

  Physical or psychological state different from when learning took place (internal cues)
• Who tested state-dependent forgetting?

  Carter and Cassaday (1998)
• What was the procedure of Carter and Cassaday's study?

  Participants were given anti-histamines which causes people to feel drowsy, creating an internal physiological state different from normal 'awake' or 'alert' state. They learnt a list of words either on the drugs or not then recalled the words either on drugs or not (4 conditions)
• What did Cassaday and Carter find?

  That when the internal states at learning and recall were different, performance on memory test was significantly worse. So when cues are absent (e.g drowsy when recalling info but were alert when learning it) there is more forgetting.
• What 4 evaluation points are there?

  - supporting evidence

  - questioning context effects

  - recall vs. Recognition

  — real life application
• Evaluation 1: supporting evidence


  There's a great amount of research support on the explanation, including by Godden / Baddeley and Carter / Cassaday, which all provide evidence and support. Eysenk (2010) goes so far to argue retrieval failure is maybe the main reason for forgetting in the LTM. Strength because supporting evidence increases the validity of a theory. Especially true when the evidence shows that retrieval failure occurs in real life situations as well as in the highly controlled lab.
• Evaluation 2: questioning context effects

  Baddeley argues that context effects are actually not very strong, especially in real life. Different contexts have to be very different before an effect is really seen. For example, it would be hard to find an environment as different from land as water that Baddeley and Godden used. 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, which is a more real life situation. Limitation because it means that such real-life applications of retrieval failure due to contextual cues don't actually explain much forgetting.
• Evaluation 3: recall vs. Recognition

  The context effect may not be related to retrieval failure as a result of cues, but instead the kind of memory being tested. Baddeley (1980) replicated their underwater experiment but used a recognition test instead of recall - all ppts has to say whether they recognised a word read to them from the list, instead of retrieving it for themselves. If the context effect was fully accurate, there would be retrieval failure with different external cues but there wasn't. Limitation of context effects because it means that the presence or absence of cues only affects memory when you test it in a certain way.
• Evaluation 4: real life applications

  Although Baddeley suggested that context related cues may appear to not have a very strong effect on forgetting, he still argues that they might have some importance, especially in real life. For instance, many people have experienced going downstairs for something but forgetting what you needed when you're there, when you come back up you remember again. It is possible that when you're having trouble remembering something, try and recall the environment in which you learnt it first. This is in fact a basic principle of the cognitive interview, a method of getting eyewitnesses to crimes to recall more information. Having real life applications is a strength because it can help improve the lives of daily people, and means it has higher ecological validity.