Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Description of retrieval failure (Evaluation (There is a lot of research…
Description of retrieval failure
The encoding specificity principle
Memory is the most effective if information present at the time of encodig is also present at the time of retrieval. Cues at the learning and recall phases do not have identical but the closer the cues are the more retrieval is aided.
How?
Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) gave participants 48 words belonging to 12 categories; each presented as category + word
Showed?
Participants in the free recall condition showed, on average, 40% recall. Participants in the cued-recall condition recalled 60% of the words.
Context-dependent forgetting
How?
In Godden and Baddeley's (1975) study scuba divers learned a set of words either on land or underwater. They were later asked to recall these words in the same learning environment or a different environment.
Showed?
Highest recall was seen when divers recalled words in the same environment as they laerned them.
State-dependent
How?
Goodwin et al. (1969) asked male participants to remember lists of words when they were sober or drunk. Participants in the drunk condition consumed enough alcohol to be 3 times over the UK drink driving limit. After 24 hours recall of the word list was tested.
Showed?
Recall was highest when participants recalled in the same state as when they learned the words.
Key terms
Cues:
Things that serve as a reminder either forming a meaningful link to the items to be remembered, or may be environmental cues or related to mental state.
Retrieval failure:
Forgetting due to the absence of cues. The memory connot be retrieved- it is available but not accessible. Successful retrieval relies on the presence of cues.
Evaluation
There is a lot of research support for the importance of cues
Evidence supporting this explanation of forgetting can be seen across a range of experiments: lab, field and natural as well as anecdotal evidence and so has relevance to everyday memory experiences.
Real-world application
Smith (1979) showed that just thinking of the room in which the original learnign took place was as effective as actually being in the same room at the time of retrieval. Another real-world application is the use of retrieval cues in the cogntive interview.
Retrieval failure is a more important explanations for forgetting
Tulving and Psotka (1971) asked participants to learn lists of 24 words divided into 6 categories. For each list participants wrote down as many words as theycould remember. Participants were then presented wwith category names and asked to recall words. In the free recall condition the more lists the participants learned the poorer the recall- evidence of retroactive forgetting. However, cued recall was about 70% no matter how many lists had been learned.
Absence of cues cannot expalin all forgetting
Most of teh research into cues involves learning lists of words so findings might not apply to more complex learning, which is less easily triggered by single cues. The outshining hypothesis states a cue's effectiveness is reduced by the presence of better cues. Context effects are largely eliminated when learning meaningful material so while absence of retrieval cues can explain some everyday forgetting it cannot explain all forgetting.
The danger of circularity
The relationship between cues and retrieval is correlational rather than causal . Cues do not cause retrieval, they are just associated with retrieval. Baddeley (1997) suggests the encoding specificity principle is impossible to test because it is circular. The principle states if a cue leads to retrieval of a memory than the cue must have been encoded, if retrieval fails then the cue cannot have been encoded. But it is impossible to test whether an item has or hasn't been encoded in memory.