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Psychology - retrieval failure theory - AO1 Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

Memory - retrieval failure theory - AO1

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

retrieval failure theory

retrieval failure is a form of forget­ting. it occurs when you don't have the necessary cues to access a memory. the memory is available but not accessible until a cue is provided.
CUE: a cue is a trigger of inform­ation that allows us to access a memory - cues may be directly or indirectly linked. ( indirectly linked cues is inform­ation that was encoded at the same time as the memory )
Encoding specif­icity principle (ESP) - tulving discovered that that if a cue is to be useful it has to be present at the time of encoding and retrieval. if cues available at the time of encoding and at the time of retrieval are different there will be some forget­ting.

indirect cues

forgetting can either be context dependant forgetting or state dependant forget­ting.
cues for context dependant forgetting are enviro­nmental cues (such as weather)
cues for state dependant forgetting are internal cues (such as mood).

context dependant forgetting

RESEARCH - GODDEN & BADDELEY
Aim- to invest­igate the effects of context cues on recall.
Procedure - diving club partic­ipants took part in a word list recall task - 4 condit­ions.
1. learning words on land and recalling on land
2. learning words on land and recalling under water
3. learning words underwater and recalling words under water
4. learning words under water and recalling on land
Findings - accurate recall was 40% lower then the conditions where the learning and recall were different.
Conclusion - enviro­nmental cues improve recall and this supports cue dependant theory.
 

state dependant forgetting

RESEARCH - GOODWIN et al.
Aim - to invest­igate the effects of state cues on recall
Procedure - asked pts to take part in a word recall task - 4 conditions
1. learning words drunk then recalling them drunk
2. learning words drunk then recalling them sober
3. learning words sober then recalling them sober
4. learning words sober then recalling them drunk.
Findings - accurate recall was lower in the conditions where the internal state of learning and recall was different
Conclusion - state dependant cues improve recall and this supports cue dependant theory.