Explanations for forgetting - retrieval failure

• what is retrieval failure


  • it occurs when we don't have the necessary cues to access memory. the memory is available but not accessible
• What is the encoding specificity principle?

  Tulving- that a cue has to be present at encoding and present at retrieval

  • Some cues are linked in a meaningful way such as in mnemonics
  • some are encoded at time of learning.
  • There are two non-meaningful cues that can affect recall
  • which are context-dependent forgetting and state-dependent forgetting
• who did research into context dependent forgetting


  • Godden and Baddeley (1980)
  • They learnt a word list either on land or in the water and then recalled either in a matching condition or non matching condition.
  • They found that accurate recall was 40% lower in the non matching condition.
  • Therefore, this supports the idea that external cues in the context were missing when they were in a non matching condition and this caused context-dependent forgetting.
• who did research into context dependent forgetting


  • Abernathy (1940) tested students each week in either: Same teaching room and same instructor, Same teaching room and different instructor, Different teaching room and different instructor or different teaching room and same instructor.
  • He found that that those who were tested in the same room with same instructor did best and those who were in non-matching conditions performed worse
  • demonstrating context dependent forgetting.
• State dependant forgetting

  • Hardman (1998)
  • those who learned a list of words on a exercise bike could remember them better when exercising again than those who were not exercising.
  • This demonstrates that a mismatch between internal state during learning and recall can cause state-dependent forgetting.
• different contexts are hard to find

  • However, Baddeley (1997) did criticise his own study into the divers as it used contexts that were very different (land and water) which probably wouldn’t happen in real life.
  • Generally, recalling information in different rooms is unlikely to have a big impact on forgetting as they are very similar environments.
  • Therefore, the lack of context cues may not be useful in explaining real life forgetting.
• real life application


  • use our understanding of forgetting to develop strategies for improving recall.
  • By matching our context or state learning to later retrieval we can help to improve memory.
  • if students sat their exams in the same room they learn the information in,
  • they would probably perform better.
  • Therefore, these explanations have good real world value.