retrieval failure

Retrieval failure

A form of forgetting that occurs when we don’t have the necessary cues to access memory. The memory is available unless a suitable cue is provided.

Cue

A trigger of information that allows us to access a memory. Such cues may be meaningful or indirectly linked by being encoded at the time of learning. Indirect cues may be external (environment) or internal (mood or degree of drunkness)

encoding specificity principle

Tulving found that for a cue to be helpful it must be present at encoding (learning) and present at retrieval (recall).

Context dependant forgetting (external)

Godden and Baddeley found deep sea divers more accurately recalled information that was learnt under the same conditions (eg learn and recall on land and learn and recall on water). Recall was 40% less accurate in non-matching conditions.

State dependent forgetting

Carter and cassaday found performance on memory test was worse in mismatched state conditions (learnt on drug recall not on drug) compared to performance when learnt and recall was under the same state.