Forgetting PEEL paragraphs

PEEL for Ethical issues (Interference)

P - Ethical Issues

E - Müller and Pilzecker, 1900 gave participants lists on nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes.After a retention interval asked them to recall the lists.Performance was less good if participants had been given an intervening task eg. describe the painting shown

E - The participants did not give informed consent

L - This is because it is an older study which would have had ethical issues

PEEL for real world applications (Interference)

P - Real-world applications

E - McGeoch and McDonald (1931) gave participants a list of 10 adjectives (List A). After learning there was a 10 minute interval during which they learned List B.

If List B was full of synonyms of List A, recall was poor (12%). If it was full of nonsense syllables it has less effect (26% recall).

E - For students to avoid studying similar material close together e.g. french and spanish

L - This shows that interference is strongest the more similar the items are. Only interference, not decay can explain this effect.

PEEL for Explanation (interference)

P - Does not explain all forgetting

E - Anderson (2000) concluded that interference does play a role in forgetting but how much forgetting can be attributed to interference is unclear.

E - . Asking participants to recall lists of words is low in mundane realism and reduces the ecological validity of the findings. However, despite this proactive and retroactive interference are commonly observed in everyday life.

L - This shows that interference does play a role in forgetting but not how much.This means other theories are needed to provide a complete explanation of forgetting.

Evidence for research support (Retrieval failiure)

P - Research Support

E - Tulving and Pearlstone (1996) conducted a lab experiment which measured the number of words participants could correctly recall from word lists. Participants either recalled words without cues (free recall) or with cues (cued recall). On average free recall led to 40% correct recall and cued recall led to 60% correct recall.

Explanation for research support (retrieval failure)

E - For example Participants who received cues could recall more words on average than those who did not. This suggests that the information remains in LTM but without cues it is inaccessible.

Link for research support(retrieval failure)

L - . This supports the idea that information is available but inaccessible.

Evidence for real world applications (retrieval failure)

E - This was demonstrated by Abernethy (1940) who conducted a field experiment involving students. The study involved testing students in four experimental conditions. Participants tested in their usual teaching room with their usual instructor performed better than those tested with a different instructor or different room.

Explain for real world applications (retrieval failure)

E - For example, it has good real world applications for students as if students revise in the room they are taking the exam retrieval is likely to be improved.

Link for real world applications(retrieval failure)

L - Therefore this supports the idea that the information is more accessible with cues such as being in the same classroom

Evidence for retrieval failiure

P - Circular theory - cue-retrieval causality cannot be shown

E - Nairne (2002) calls this the 'myth of the encoding-retrieval match'. Baddeley (1997) made a similar criticism pointing out that the encoding specificity principle is impossible to test because it is circular.

Explanation for retrieval failure

E - : If a stimulus leads to retrieval of a memory then according to the encoding specificity principle it must have been encoded in memory. If a stimulus does not lead to the retrieval of a memory then it must not have been encoded in memory. But it is impossible to test for an item that hasn't been encoded in memory so this cannot be proved

Link for retrieval failure

L - According to this criticism, therefore the cues do not cause retrieval, they are just associated with retrieval.