Explanations for forgetting

Retrieval failure and interference

What are the 2 types of interference + explanations?

Proactive interference - old memories interfering with the recall of new memories. (old memories making it harder to remember new ones.) e.g. learning a new number but recalling your old one.

Retroactive interference - when a new memory interferes with the recall of an old one. (new memory makes it harder to remember old one) e.g. forgetting the name of an old pet when you name a new one.

Who investigated how similarity affects retroactive interference?

McGeoch and McDonald (1931) - Participants remembered a list of 10 words until recall was 100%. They then learnt a second list of words → synonyms, antonyms, unrelated words or numbers (control)

The more similar the second list of words were the worse the recall was for the original list of words. So similarity increases retroactive interference.

Who investigated retroactive interference in real life setting?

Baddeley and Hitch (1977) - investigated how retroactive interference works in a real life setting - football players

Some players played all the games, some missed games due to injury. If decay theory is correct recall should be similar for both groups, but players who played more games had forgotten proportionally more games supporting retroactive interference.

Evaluate the types of long term memory - strength

Consistent evidence

Both lab experiments and real world experiments have similar findings.

Baddeley and Hitch - football players and McGeoch and McDonald - word lists.

Simliar findings increasing reliability. McGeoch - lab experiment meaning replicable and reliable results there’s also fewer extraneous variables so you can isolate interference effects without confounding variables.

High scientific credibility and internal validity

Evaluate the types of long term memory - strength

Ecological validity

Baddeley and hitch - high ecological validity

Used football players

Meaning there’s a higher ecological validity

More generalisable results

Evaluate the types of long term memory - limitations

Mundane realism

Lacks mundane realism - McGeoch

Short tasks that don’t reflect real life, artificial stimuli (unmeaningful info)

Low ecological validity

application is limited

What are the 2 types of retrieval failure + explanation?

State dependent forgetting - when internal state or mood at the time of retrieval is different from state during learning/encoding e.g. learning something when your sober and failing to remember it when your drunk.

Context dependent forgetting - when external environment at the time of retrieval is different to the environment during learning/encoding. E.g. forgetting something when entering another room

Supporting research for state dependent forgetting: 2 studies + explanation

Godden et al. (1969) - asked male participants to learn a list of words either drunk or sober and then recall the words either in the same or different state. Memory was better when participants were in the same state. If state changes recall is impaired

Carter and Cassaday (1998)- similar study to Goodwin but using antihistamines.

Evaluate state dependent forgetting - strength

Supporting research - carter & Cassaday, Goodwin et al.

Scientific credibility as multiple studies support the theory

Evaluate state dependent forgetting - strength

Real life application

Real life application

People often forget thing learned in one emotional state but remember it when they return to that same state → showing that emotion and state can play a part in forgetting

Valid explanation and highly applicable

Evaluate state dependent forgetting - limitation

Ethical concerns - Goodwin

Getting people drunk - alcohol causes harm and impairs the ability to give informed consent, reduces reliability as memory loss could have been due to intoxication .

Evaluate state dependent forgetting - limitation

Artificial tasks

Artificial tasks

Word lists - Goodwin et al -

Not meaningful and so it doesn’t reflect real life memory

Lacks ecological validity difficult to apply to real life scenarios

Supporting research on context dependent forgetting:

Godden and Baddeley - asked deep sea divers to learn a list of words either on land or in sea then recall the list of words in the same or different location. Recall was better when recall and learning environments matched.

Evaluate context dependent forgetting - Strength

Real life application

Real life application - exams and EWT

Reinstate the context is a part of the cognitive interview

shows that recreating environments can help increase retrieval rates

Therefore highly applicable

Evaluate context dependent forgetting - Strength

Supporting research

Baddeley and Godden - credibility

Evaluate context dependent forgetting - limitation

Ecological validity

Godden and Baddeley - scuba divers/ lists that have no meaning

Doesn’t reflect real life memory

Lacks ecological validity as it could be more complicated.

Evaluate context dependent forgetting - limitation

Exaggerated

Findings could be exaggerated

Baddeley and Godden → not many people go through extreme changes in setting

Therefore moving rooms may not cause forgetting on such a large scale

Limits generalisability