forget retrieval failure

• what is retrieval failure


  when insufficient cues r available at time of recall

  so u cant access memories that are there
• what is encoding specificity principle


  -tulving found that a cue has to be both present at encoding and present at retrieval

  -if cues are different or absent forgetting occurs

  -some cues are encoded at the time of learning in a meaningful way

  -other cues r also encoded at learning but not in meaningful way

  -non-meaningful cues include: context-depending forgetting, where recall depends on external cue and state-dependent forgetting, where recall depends on internal cue
• explain research on context-dependent forgetting

  -Godden and baddeley studied deep-sea divers who work underwater to see if training on land helped or hindered their work underwater.

  -the divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land

  -this created 4 conditions
• explain findings on context-dependent forgetting

  -in 2 of these conditions the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched, whereas in other 2 it didnt.

  -accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions

  -they concluded that the external cues available at learning were different from the ones available at recall and this led to retrieval failure
• explain research on state-dependent forgetting

  -sara carter and helen cassaday gave drugs for treating hay fever to their participants

  -this made participants slightly drowsy creating a physiological state diff from normal state of being alert

  -the participants had to learn list of words and then recall the info

  -this created 4 conditions
• explain state-dependent forgetting findings

  in conditions where there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance was significantly worse. so when cues are absent then there is more forgetting