Explanations for forgetting: retrieval failure

What is retrieval failure

Retrieval failure is a form of forgetting. It occurs when we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available ur not accessible unless a suitable cue is provided.

Encoding specificity principle

Tulving proposed the encoding specificity principle which states that if a cue is going to be helpful it has to be present at encoding (when we learnt it) and president at retrieval (when we are recalling it)

• context dependant forgetting- recall depends on external cues (weather, location…)

• State dependent forgetting- recall depends on internal cues (feeing upset, being drunk)

Research on context depending forgetting

• Godden and Baddeley studied deep sea divers and gave them a list of words either on land or underwater and then were asked to recall the words either on land or on water. This created 4 conditions

• Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions.

Research on state depending forgetting

• Carter and Cassaday have antihistamine drugs to their participants. These drugs were to treat hay fever and had a mild side effect of drowsiness. The participants had to lean a list whilst being on the drug or off the drug and then had to recall the list either on the drug or off the drug. This created 4 conditions

• Performance on memory was significantly worse on conditions where there was a mismatch

Evaluation

• one strength is the impressive range of research that supports the theory- memory researchers Eysenck and Keane argue that retrieval failure is perhaps the main reason for forgetting from LTM

• One strength is that retrieval cues can help to overcome some forgetting in everyday situations- although cues may not have a strong effect on forgetting, Baddeley suggest they are still worth paying attention to