A03 - Memory - Forgetting - Retrieval Failure Flashcards
A strength of the theory is that there is a wealth of evidence suggesting that it is a reliable finding.
Godden and Baddeley, Carter and Cassaday, and Eysenck and Keane (2010) have studies showing the same effect of cue dependent forgetting.
They range in setting, both land in natural environments and they have the same consistent results.
This concept occurs in daily life, when people go into a room and forget what they went in there for, so they go back to the previous room to trigger their memory.
Therefore, the effect does seem to be present in real life situations despite the results of lab studies lacking in ecological validity.
A strength of the theory is that it has good real-life application for contexts where recall of memory is needed.
For example, students prepared for tests by using this theory.
If they do revision in the same room their exam is in, then they’ll have a higher chance of recalling the information.
Grant (1998) supports this as he showed context-dependent learning based on whether students studied in silence or whilst listening to music.
The students recalled more information on the congruent encoding/ retrieval conditions. The exams are in silence, which informs efficient study practice.
This shows that the theory of cue dependent forgetting is useful in the real world as it can affect people’s lives.
A limitation of the explanation of context dependent forgetting is that for there to be an effect on forgetting the context needs to be very different.
For example, Godden and Baddeley demonstrated the effect but on land and sea as their condition.
This difference isn’t a representative example in everyday life. Therefore, the results may lack ecological validity.
Baddeley (1997) argues that in real life the context affects aren’t strong.
This suggests that learning something in one room and recalling it in another will make very little difference.
This is a limitation of the theory as it could mean the context effects aren’t too significant in the real world, which limits its usefulness as an explanation.
A limitation of the encoding specificity principle is that it cannot be tested because it leads to circular reasoning in experiments.
Nairne (2002) criticised what he’s called the ‘myth of the encoding retrieval’ match.
When a cue produces the recall of a word successfully, it’s assumed that the cue must’ve been encoded at the time of learning.
If a cue doesn’t result in recall successfully then we assume that the code wasn’t encoded.
These are only assumptions however and can’t be tested as there isn’t a way to know if they’ve been encoded or not.
Therefore, these results are only correlational and not causational.
This is a weakness as the principle can’t be tested using other scientific principles which is important to psychology today.
