Retrieval Failure

• Tulving's Encoding Specificity Principle:

  • Tulving (1983) suggested that the same cues that are present at the time of which a particular memory is encoded, must also be present at the time of its retrieval
  • If cues are not present (there is an 'absence' of cues), we are unable to access or recall the memory and experience this as 'forgetting'
  • Cues refer to a meaningful 'link' to material that helps you recall it in some way
• There are 2 types of cue-dependent forgetting;

  • Context-Dependent Forgetting
  • State-Dependent Forgetting
• Context-Dependent Forgetting:

  • Refers to a change in our external, environmental cues

  State-Dependent Forgetting:

  • Refers to a change in our internal conditions
• Carter and Cassaday (1998) - State-Dependent Forgetting:

  • Gave 'anti-histamine' drugs with mild sedative effects to ppts - this created a change in the ppts internal conditions
  • Ppts had to recall word lists and were divided into 4 groups to do so; learn/recall without drug, learn/recall with drug, learn without/ recall with and learn with/recall without
  • Found that when the internal conditions/states of ppts were different when learning compared to when recalling, recall was significantly worse than when the conditions matched
  • Suggests the absence of cues influences retrieval failure
• Godden and Baddeley (1975) - Context -Dependent Forgetting:

  • Deep sea divers had to learn and recall word lists - they were split into 4 different conditions; learn/recall on land, learn/recall in the sea, learn on land recall in the sea and learn in the sea recall on land
  • Found that accurate recall was significantly lower (40% less) in the mismatched context conditions, compared to in the matching ones
  • Supports the idea that absence of cues influences retrieval failure
• AO3 - Different Contexts Need to be Extreme to Cause Forgetting:

  • Baddeley suggested that learning something in one room and recalling it in another is unlikely to cause significant forgetting, if any at all
  • Suggests the theory and its supporting research lack ecological validity and do not represent the principles of forgetting in everyday life
  • Means that the real-life application of the theory is limited and so discredits the theory itself