forgetting

AO1

  • two explanations for forgetting are retrieval failure and interference theory

  • retrieval failure   

    • based on tulving’s encoding specificity principle, which states that cues associated with a memory are encoded at the same time as the memory and in order for memory to be retrieved, the cue has to be present at encoding and retrieval

    • there are two types of cues: context and state

      • context dependent cues - based on the environment, such as location or memorisation

      • state dependent cues - based on the state the individual is in, such as being inebriated, anxious, happy etc

  • interference theory

    • information that is more similar will be more difficult to remember, as new or old info begins interfering with recall

    • proactive - OLD is recalled, NEW is forgotten

    • retroactive - NEW is recalled, OLD is forgotten

AO3

  • one strength is that there is research support

  • mcgeoch and mcdonald studied interference where ppt had to learn two lists. the first list contained synonyms, antonyms or words unrelated to the second list

  • they found that recall was worse with the synonyms

  • this suggests that similar information makes it more difficult for information to be recalled, which supports interference theory

  • another strength is that there is research supporting retrieval failure

  • godden and baddeley did research on context dependent forgetting

  • ppt has to learn word lists on land or in water. they found that recalling in the opposite context of learning decreased accuracy by 40%

  • this supports the idea that context is a cue and changing this can negatively affect recall and result in forgetting

    • CA - however, one could argue that the studies are artificial and doesn’t reflect forgetting in a real life setting. godden and baddeley’s study took place in very different environments and normally people are not recalling information in contexts as differing as land and underwater. baddeley himself admitted that that contexts such as differing rooms are not enough to cause forgetting. furthermore, they used artificial stimuli which has very little salience to the ppt and doesnt reflect information that people have to remember in reality

  • a further weakness of retrieval failure is that it is a case of circular reasoning

  • a person may claim the cue has been associated with recall but there is not way to establish this because it is not scientifically testable to do so

  • thus we cannot ascertain for certain that forgetting is due to retrieval failure and not another factor