Explanation of Forgetting: Retrieval Failure

• Forgetting in long term memory is caused by failing to access the memory due to insufficient cues to aid recall, rather than the memory being unavailable.
• Cues are certain information about a situation that act as a trigger to access the memory.

• Certain information about a situation that acts as a trigger to access the memory and without these, the mind is unable to locate the correct memory.
• Such cues may be meaningfully linked to the material to be remembered or may not such as environmental cues (external) or internal cues (such as mood or degree of drunkenness). 
• Therefore, a lack of cues can cause retrieval failure.

• Cues help retrieval if the same cues are present when the memory is coded and when the memory is recalled.
• The closer the retrieval cue to the original cue, the better the cue works.
• Tulving (1983) called this the encoding specificity principle.

Tulving and Pearlstone (1966)

• Participants had to learn 48 words from 12 categories.
• Participants were tested on free recall or cued recall (given cues in the form of category names)
• On average, participants in the cued-recall condition recalled 60% of the words compared to 40% in the cued-recall condition.
  

• When memory retrieval is dependent on an external environmental cue.
• Recall will be better when the context at encoding matches the context at retrieval.

Godden and Baddeley (1975) investigated the effect of contextual cues:

Procedure:

• In this study, divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and were then asked to recall the words either underwater or on land.
• Therefore, there were 4 experimental conditions.

Findings:

• When the environmental contexts of learning and recall did not match, accurate recall was 40% lower than when they did match.

Conclusion:

• The external cues available at learning were different from ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure.

• When memory retrieval is dependent on internal cues. (e.g. mood)
• Recall will be better when a person's physical or psychological state is similar at encoding and retrieval.

Goodwin et al. (1969) investigated the effects of alcohol on state-dependent retrieval.

• They found that when people coded information when drunk, accuracy of recall was greater when they recalled a list of words in the same state.
  

1. Research support: Godden and Baddeley + Goodwin et al.

2. Individual differences

3. Real world applications

4. Encoding specificity principle 

5. Tulving and Psotka (1971) 

Research support to suggest cues can affect recall of information.

• Godden and Baddeley (1975) investigated the effect of contextual cues.
• In this study, divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and were then asked to recall the words either underwater or on land.
• Therefore, there were 4 experimental conditions.
• When the environmental contexts of learning and recall did not match, accurate recall was 40% lower than when they did match.
• The external cues available at learning were different from ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure.
• Goodwin et al. (1969) investigated the effects of alcohol on state-dependent retrieval.
• They found that when people coded information when drunk, their accuracy of recall was greater when they recalled a list of words in the same state.

However, research into state-dependent forgetting such as Goodwin et al.'s study raises ethical concerns by encouraging people to become drunk or under the influence of substances which could lead to injury or even accidental death.

Also, the level of engagement from particpants when under the influence of alcohol may not necessarily be genuine due to the way it affects people's willingness to provide honest responses

E.g. some participants may have deliberately performed poorly in some situations or tried harder in others, due to how alcohol affects people in unpredictable ways.

A strength is that research into retrieval failure and cue dependent forgetting has real world applications particularly in the search for missing people and reconstructing their last known whereabouts.

Retrieval cues have also helped in cognitive interviews to help people recall information for witness testimonies.

Therefore, understanding how cues affect recall can help us develop ways to improve memory for the benefit of society.

A limitation is that the encoding specificity principle cannot be tested and leads to circular reasoning.

• Baddeley (1997) criticised the encoding specificity principle as impossible to test and verify for certain due to it being correlational. This would make the theory unscientific.
• If a cue aids retrieval, it could then be argued to have been encoded in the memory, however of it does not, then it could be argued that it was not encoded in the memory as a cue. 
• The fact that it is impossible to test for an item as having been encoded or not means we cannot fully test and verify the validity of the encoding specificity principle. 

Support for retrieval failure having more validity than interference theory comes from Tulving and Psotka (1971).

• They demonstrated that apparent interference effects are actually due to the absence of cues to aid retrieval. 
• Participants were given word lists to remember with one condition having catergory headings and another without. According to interference theory, the more lists a participant must learn, the worse their performance will become. Tulving and Psotka found evidence of this retroactive interference.
• However, when participants were given cued recall, the effects of interference disappeared. Participants remembered about 70% of the words, regardless of how many lists they had been given.
• This showed that the information was available but could not be retrieved, supporting retrieval failure as a more valid explanation for forgetting than interference.