Memory - Forgetting - Retrieval Failure Flashcards
What are the 2 considerations for whether a cue will help recollection, according to Tulving’s Encoding Specificity Principle?
Context dependent forgetting – Godden and Baddeley (1975)
State dependent forgetting – Carter and Cassaday (1998)
Coding specificity principle
A cue that supports memory is most effective when it’s present both at the time encoding and the time of retrieval; forgetting will occur if cues are absent at one stage.
What is cue dependent forgetting?
Information in long term memory but forgetting happens due to the absence of appropriate cues/prompts encoded at the same time (encoding specificity principle).
What did Tulving and Thomson (1973) propose?
They proposed the encoding specificity principle, which argued a cue that supports memory is most effective when the cue is:
- Present at the time of encoding.
- Present at the time of retrieval.
What is the impact of cues differing at encoding/retrieval?
There will be forgetting if cues at encoding or retrieval differ.
What is a meaningful cue – give an example.
It is information that’s encoded at the time of learning which is stored in a way that’s meaningful.
E.g using a song or rhyme to remember something.
What is a non-meaningful cue?
Information that’s available at the learning time which isn’t directly related to the encoded material.
E.g weather.
What is a mnemonic?
They work as tools to help remember facts or large amounts of information. It could be a rhyme, acronym, song, phrase or image to remember a list of facts in a certain order.
What are the 2 types of forgetting that can result from a failure to encode non-meaningful cues?
Context dependent forgetting – where recall is influenced by an external cue (like weather, sights, sounds, smells). Being in a different place would inhibit memory as we would lack environmental cues.
State dependent forgetting – where recall is influenced by an internal cue (such as being drunk, drugs, emotions, state of arousal). Being in a different emotional state would inhibit memory as we’d lack state dependent cues.
Describe Godden & Baddeley’s experiment. Which type of forgetting did this demonstrate?
Did a study of deep-sea divers working underwater. It’s crucial for the divers to remember instructions before going underwater.
Procedure: the divers learnt a list of words either underwater or on land and were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land.
This created four conditions:
Learn on land – recall on land.
Learn on land – recall underwater.
Learn underwater – recall on land.
Learn underwater – recall underwater.
Findings: in two of the conditions the environmental context of learning and recall matched, but in the other two they didn’t. Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions.
The external cues available at learning were different from the ones at recall which led to retrieval failure.
This is context dependent forgetting.
Describe Carter & Cassaday’s (1998) experiment – which type of forgetting did this demonstrate?
Gave antihistamine drugs to participants. The gave a mild sedative effect which made participants slowly drowsy.
This creates an internal physiological state from the normal state of being alert and awake.
The participants had to learn lists of words and passages of prose and recall it, which created four conditions:
Learn on drug – recall when on it.
Learn on it – recall when not on it.
Learn not on drug – recall when on it.
Learn not on it – recall when not on it.
Findings: in conditions there was a mismatch between internal state at learning and recall, performance on the memory test was much worse.
So, when cues are absent, there’s more forgetting. For example, you’re drowsy when recalling information but you were alert when learning it.
This is state dependent forgetting.
Describe Overton’s (1972) findings on state-dependent forgetting.
Overton (1972) asked the participants to learn the material either sober or drunk.
Then tested them on the material when they were sober or drunk.
They found out that recall was worse if it was in a different internal state and the best when it was in the same internal state.
E.g. material learnt sober was best recalled when sober.
