M : Retrieval failure - explanation for forgetting Flashcards
(14 cards)
KT: Cues?
- Cues are things that serve as a reminder.
- They may meaningfully link to the material to be remembered or may not be meaningfully linked, such as environmental cues (a room) or cues related to your mental state (being or sad or drunk.)
KT: Retrieval failure
- Occurs due to the asbence of cues.
- An explanation for forgetting based on the idea that the issue relates to being able to retrieve a memory that is there (available) but not accessible.
- Retrieval depends on using cues.
Forgetting in LTM is mainly due to what?
What is this?
- Retrieval failure (lack of accessibility rather than availability).
- This is the failure to find an item of information because you have insufficient clues or cues.
The encoding specificity principle.
What did Endel Tulving and Donald Thompson (1973) propose?
What does the encoding specificity principle further state?
- Proposed that memory is most effective if information that was present at encoding is also available at the time of retrieval.
- States that a cue doesn’t have to be exactly right but the closer the cue is to the original item, the more useful it will be.
The encoding specificity principle
How did Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) demonstrate the value of retrieval cues in their study?
- In their study, participants had to learn 48 words belonging to 12 categories.
- Each word was presented as category + word, e.g. fruit-apple, fruit-orange.
- There were two different recall conditions.
- Participants had to either recall as many words as they could (free recall) or they were given cues in the form of the category names (cued recall).
The encoding specificity principle
Tulving and Pearlstone (1966)- what were the findings in their study?
- In the free recall condition, 40% of words were recalled on average.
- In the cued-recall condition, participants recalled 60% of the words.
The encoding specificity principle
Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) & Tulving and Thompsons findings show evidence of what?
Show evidence of cues that have been explicitly or implicitly encoded at the time of learning and have a meaningful link to the learning material.
The encoding specificity principle
What is another type of cue other than cues that have been implicitly encoded at the time of learning and have a meaningful link to the learning material?
- There is a cue which is not related to the learning material in any meaningful way.
- Whenever any information is learned, we often remember where we were (environmental context) or how we felt (the emotional state at the time).
- This information is encoded to varying degrees along with the material learned. It is sometimes the case that being reminded of a particular place or mood can act as a trigger (or cue) to help access a memory.
Context-dependent forgetting
What occured in the study by Ethel Abernethy (1940)?
- Arranged for a group of students to be tested before a certain course began.
- They were then tested each week.
- Some students- tested in their teaching room by usual instructor- others tested by a different instructor.
- Others- tested in a different room by usual instructor or by a different one.
- There were 4 experimental conditions.
Context-dependent forgetting
What were the findings in the study by Ethel Abernethy (1940) ?
Why was this the outcome?
- Those tested by the same instructor in the same room performed best.
- Presumably- familiar things (room and instructor) acted as memory cues. Abernethy also found that superior students were least affected by the changes and inferior students most.
Context-dependent forgetting
What happened in the study by Godden and Baddeley?
What did the results show?
- Researchers recruited scuba divers as participants and arranged for them to learn a set of words either on land or underwater.
- They were tested either on land or underwater- so there were 4 experimental conditions.
- Results showed that the highest recall occured when the initial context matched the recall environment e.g. learning on land and recalling on land.
State-dependent forgetting
What can also act as a cue?
The mental state you are in at the time of learning.
State-dependent forgetting
What happened in Goodwin et al (1969) study?
- He asked male volunteers to remember a list of words when they were either drunk or sober, (those in the drunk condition imbibed about 3x the UK drink driving limit.)
- Participants were asked to recall the lists after 24hours when some were sober but others had to get drunk again (for experimental purposes).
- The recall scores suggest that information learned when drunk is more available when in the same state later.
