| Retrieval Failure | Form of forgetting when we do not have necessary cues to access information. Memory is still available, just not accessible till the needed cue is provided. |
| Cue | a trigger of information that allows us to access a memory. Cues can be direct(meaningful) or indirectly linked by being encoded at time of learning. |
| Encoding Specificity Principle | - present at encoding
- present at retrieval |
| Context Dependent Forgetting | recall depends on external cue like weather or place |
| State Dependent Forgetting | recall depending on internal cue (feeling happy or drunk or high) |
| Research on context dependent forgetting | Godden and Baddeley
4 conditions - deep divers - had to memorize a list on land or sea and recall underwater or on land.
Results - accurate recall was 40% lower in non matching conditions. Conclusion - if external cues given while learning were not also present during recall, lead to retrieval failure. |
| Research on state dependent forgetting | Carter and Cassaday
Gave antihistamines drugs to patients, made them drowsy - Four conditions - had to learn list of words and passage
Results - mismatch between internal states lead to accuracy recall rates to be significantly worse. |
| STRENGTH of retrieval failure | - Real world application : can help to overcome forgetting in everyday situations. Even if it is not a drastic impact on forgetting it still matters. Next time we’re in a room and we forget what we went there for, we can remember to go and look for cues. Interference theory gives us real life strategies to tackle forgetting. |
| LIMITATION | - Recall VS Recognition : Godden and Baddley redid their experiment and asked their participants to recognize rather than recall. Results suggested that context dependent forgetting had no effect on recognizing. Retrieval failure only affects some forms of the memory being tested. |
