forgetting

forgetting

when learned information can’t be retrieved

STM - due to availability problems - no longer available due to limited capacity / duration

LTM - due to interference / accessibility problem - info is confused or stored but hard to retrieve

what are the explanations for forgetting

interference

retrieval failure

what is interference as an explanation for forgetting

when retrieval is disrupted by presence of competing/similar information interfering with each other making it harder to recall specific information

cause of forgetting in LTM

proactive

retroactive

what is proactive interference

when old memories interfere with new ones

what is retroactive interference

when new memories interfere with old ones

what are strengths of interference as an explanation for forgetting

• lab evidence, controlled - peterson+peterson’s trigram study, high internal validity

• real life studies - baddeley + hitch with rugby players, the more games they played they couldn’t remember who they played, ecological validity

• real life applications - high external validity, improves revision

limitation of interference as an explanation for forgetting

• artificial materials

baddeley and hitch

rugby players example

what is retrieval failure

inability to recall long term memories due to missing retrieval cues

so information is still in LTM but temporarily inaccessible when cues are not available

what did Tulving suggest

encoding specificity principle

memory recall is more effective when the retrieval context matches encoding context, as similar cues facilitate access to the stored information

what 2 kinds of cues are there

state-dependent

context-dependent

what is context-dependent failure

external retrieval cues, your setting, such as being at home or in school

research suppporting context-dependent failure

Godden + Baddeley

18 divers learnt 36 unrelated words, 1 group on the beach and the other in the water

when asked to recall words half of the group on the beach stayed there and the other went into the water, and half the group in the water remained there, and the other went to the beach

results showed that recall was better when the where recalling info in the same environment they learnt it

evaluate Godden + Baddeley’s study

• limited ecological validity

• artificial - meaningless words

• groups who had to move locations were more disrupted

• controlled experiment so high reliability, can be replicated and tested

what is state-dependent failure

someones internal state such as being drunk, sober, happy, tired

research supporting state-dependent memory

Goodwin et al

asked 48 male medical students to remember a list of words either drunk or sober

they were asked to recall after 24 hours when some were sober but had to get drunk again

randomly assigned 4 groups - SS (sober both days) AA (intoxicated both) AS, SA

they had to do 4 tests - avoidance task, verbal rote-learning task, word association test, picture recognition task

more errors made on day to with SA + AS than AA or SS.

SS participants performed best in all

but supports state-dependent memory

evaluation of Goodwin’s study

• limited ecological validity as it is artificial

• demand characteristics, they knew they were in a study

• controlled experiment, can be replicated and test reliability

proactive interference study

Underwood

investigated how previously learned materials affects recall of new info

participants learned multiple lists of words, then tried to recall the last one (after and interval)

findings showed - higher number of lists prior led to poorer recall of most recent list

recall accuracy was about 20% for participants with 10+ prior lists

70% for participants with just 1 list