Forgetting

• What are two strengths and two limitations of Interference?

  - McDonald and McGeough (LIST)

  - Baddeley and Hitch (RUGBY PLAYERS)

  - Methodology (LAB EXPERIMENTS) of McGeough and McDonald

  - Overcoming Interference with CUES (Tulving and Psotka)
• Outline McGeough and McDonalds Study

  - participants given 10 words to learn n practised remembering until they were 100% accurate, then given a NEW list

  • testing RA interference - new info affecting old info

  - there were six groups and each got a diff list varying in similarity to the original list

  G1-synonyms, G2-antonyms G3-words unrelated to og G4-consonant syllables G5-3-digit numbers G6-no new list (control-rested)

  RESULTS: when participants were asked to recall the og list, forgetting occurred the most when the new list was more similar (SYNONYMS)
• Evaluate their study (LAB EXPERIMENT) - McGeough and McDonald

  - results of interference are usually higher in lab experiments than in real life

  - tasks participants were given in their study were artificial and not typical of everyday life/memory (MEMORISING DIFF LISTS WITH SAME MEANING)

  - for interference to work, memories have to be fairly similar which may only occur in real life in such close proximity very rarely (REVISING SIMILAR SUBJECTS IN SAME DAY)

  - THEREFORE, this questions the Interference theory due to research lacking ecological validity
• more ecologically valid research - BADDELEY + HITCH


  - rugby players were asked to recall the names of teams they had played earlier in the season

  - players played in varying numbers of games due to injury

  - whether a team was recalled or not was relative to the number of intervening games rather than the time interval since the first game

  • more games=poorer recall due to more info causing interference and confusion

  THEREFORE, this study supports retro-active Interfernece
• Overcoming Interference with CUES - Tulving and Psotka


  - gave participants 5 lists of 24 words made up of categories

  - participants were not told about the categories, and researchers though this would be obvious

  RESULTS:

  recall of first list was 70% accurate but this got worse after each new additional list was asked to learn - DUE TO INTERFERENCE

  when the participants were CUE-TESTED (given categories), recall improved to 70% again

  THEREFORE, this shows that Interfernece caused a temporary loss of accessibility to memories in LTM, but can be accessed via cues
• What is a cue?


  any stimulus that can trigger the recall of memories/information
• Encoding Specificity Principle


  if cues are to help recall information, they must be present at ENCODING (where we learn it) and at RETRIEVAL (where we recall it)

  This suggests that cues improve recall when the RETRIEVAL CONTEXT is similar to ENCODING CONTEXT
• Supporting Evidence for CONTEXT-DEPENDENT FORGETTING

  Godden and Baddeley

  • professional scuba divers had difficulty recalling their observations that that they observed underwater when they were back on land
  • Godden and Baddeley investigated their ability to recall lists of words under 4 conditions

  C1 - L underwater R underwater C3 - L land R underwater

  C2 - L underwater R land C4 - L land R underwater

  RESULTS: these who learned and recalled in the same contedot remembered 40% more words
• Supporting Evidence - QUIET AND NOISY ROOM


  Grant et al

  • participants had to memorise a list of words and recall under 4 conditions of noisy and quiet rooms

  C1 - L noisy R noisy C3 - L quiet R noisy

  C2 - L noisy R quiet C4 - L quiet R quiet

  RESULTS: those who learned and recalled in the same external context remembered more words than those who learned and recalled in different contexts