Explanation for forgetting - retrieval failure.

The context (place) of learning / retrieval are different e.g. learning psychology in a classroom and being examined in the auditorium.

A- To investigate the effect of contextual cues in a realistic environment.

P- Ps were professional scuba divers. They were asked to learn a word list either on land or under water. They were then asked to recall either on land or underwater (4 experimental conditions.)

F- Recall was highest when learning and recalling  environment matched, non- matching had 50% lower recall.

C- Contextual cues can help us to recall infomation.

• Group of students tested each week. 4 experimental conditions; usual instructor, different instructor, different room with usual instructor or same teaching room with usual instructor. 
• Presumably familiar things' (room + instructor) acted as memory cues (same room + instructor scored best
• Superior students least affected by the change, inferior affected most.

The mental-state you are in at the time of learing can act as a cue.

Goodwin et al (1969)

• Asked male volunteers to remember a list of words when either drunk/ sober (drunk were 3 times over UK drink driving limit.) Participants asked to recall the list after 24 hours when some were sober but others had to get drunk again. Recall scores suggest that information learned when drunk is more available when in the same state later.

• Tulving and Thomson (1973) proposed that memory is most effective if information that was present at encoding is also available at the time of retrieval. They suggested that environmental cues and mental cues aid recall.