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Forgetting - Retrieval Failure

Recall is dependent on accessing stored information through the retrieval cues under which it was stored. Retrieval cues can be external contexts or internal states. Forgotten information is still stored but temporarily inaccessible. Context-dependent failure occurs when the external setting at recall differs from encoding, while state-dependent failure relates to differences in internal states. Both types of failures support the theory that greater similarity between encoding and retrieval contexts improves recall.

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69 views3 pages

Forgetting - Retrieval Failure

Recall is dependent on accessing stored information through the retrieval cues under which it was stored. Retrieval cues can be external contexts or internal states. Forgotten information is still stored but temporarily inaccessible. Context-dependent failure occurs when the external setting at recall differs from encoding, while state-dependent failure relates to differences in internal states. Both types of failures support the theory that greater similarity between encoding and retrieval contexts improves recall.

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mohammedaliadnan2007
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Forgetting – Retrieval Failure

LTM problems of access, not availability (LTM is ‘permanent’ and ‘unlimited’)


Cue – dependent forgetting.
Retrieval failure:
The reason we forget is due to insufficient failures:
- When we encode a new memory, we also store information that occurred around it –
cues.
- If the cues are not present at recall then it is hard to retrieve the memory. It is still
available – we just can’t access the memory due to lack of cues.
Theory – encoding – specified principle (Tulving)
“The greater the similarity between the encoding event and the retrieval event, the
greater the likelihood of recalling the original memory”.
If a cue is to help recall, it must be present at encoding and at retrieval.
E.g., mnemonic techniques.

 The effectiveness of the cue depends on:


o Overload (number of items)
o Depth of cue processing
o How well the cue fits the information

Negative - Cannot be tested – whether the cue has been encoded or not is just assumed based
on recall or no recall.
Support for lack of cues – Tulving and Psotka (1971)
- List of words to remember with headings that did not need to be remembered.
- Free recall condition – not given headings.
o They remembered less that the cued recall condition.
- Given the headings.
o Remembered 70% of words.
- Free recalled condition experienced retroactive interference – but effects disappeared
in cued recall
Summary:
- Recall is dependent upon accessing info by remembering the retrieval cue under
which the info is stored.
- Retrieval cues can be external (context) or internal (state)
- Forgotten information is still stored, bbut is (temporarily) inaccessible.
- Predicts that

Context Dependent Failure


Forgetting – Retrieval Failure
Recalling in a different external setting to coding.
- Abernathy (1940) – recall who's with unfamiliar teacher in an unfamiliar room.
- Godden and Baddeley – (1975) divers learning information on land or in water (but
are all settings this different?) recall was 40% lower in non – matching onditions.
- Smith (1970)
o Same room – 18/80 words.
o Different room – 12/80
o PP’s who imagined themselves back in original room recalled avg 17/80.
- Aggleton and Wasket (1999) – smells an act as cues and last for several years (Viking
museum).
EVALUATION:
- Limited ecological validity – artificial task – we are not usually asked to learn a list of
meaningless words – effects only works when tested in certain ways.
- However, it wads a controlled experiment so it can be replicated, and reliability can
be tested.
- Demand characteristics – participants may be aware of what the experimenter is
experimenting so they will try harder to remember things (words, diver instructions).
- Difficult to disprove as if recall does not occur it is because the information is not
stored or because you are not providing the right cues.
- Real life application – improving EWT earn witnesses are asked to describe the
context in which the incident happened during cognitive interviews.
State dependent forgetting
- Things happening internally.
Carter and Cassiday (1998) – how well could people remember instructions of how to take
medications after being cured?
Findings:
- Mismatch between internal state at learning and recall resulted in significantly worse
performance recalling words or prose.
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE:
- Goodwin et al. (1969) – when sober, heavy drinkers forgot where they had put things
but remembered once they drank sufficient alcohol.
- Overton (1972) – found same thing as Goodwin et al. – level of alcohol at coding and
retrieval had a positive correlation on recall.
- Eich (1980) and Darley et al. (1973) found similar findings to heavy marijuana users.
Marian and Fausey (1986):
- Found that memory for a story was better if the language in which it was presented
and the language that was used to test memory was the same.
Forgetting – Retrieval Failure
- participants who heard the story in Spanish and. We’re asked questions in English
were less accurate.
- This was because the environmental cues present at encoding were absent at recall.

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