Evaluation

• What is a criticism of the retrieval failure explanation?

  Baddeley (1997) argues that different contexts have to be very different indeed before an effect is seen. For example, it would be hard to find an environment as different from land as underwater (Godden and Baddeley). 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.

  This means that retrieval failure due to lack of contextual cues may not actually explain much everyday forgetting.
• Recall versus recognition

  One limitation is that context effects may depend substantially on the type of memory being tested.

  Godden and Baddeley (1980) replicated their underwater experiment but with a recognition test instead of recall. Results showed no context-dependent effect in recognition, indicating that retrieval failure might be a limited explanation for forgetting. This suggests that the impact of context effects on memory may vary depending on the type of memory test employed.