Explanations for forgetting

Explanations for forgetting

1. RETRIEVAL FAILURE / CUE - DEPENDANT FORGETTING

   • Forgetting in LTM is mainly due to this
   • Failure to find an item as there is insufficient cues
   • TULVING (1973) - encoding-specificity principle. If a cue is to help us remember something then it has to be present at the point of encoding and at retrieval. If they are different at the point of encoding and retrieval, this is when we will start to forget things.
     • TULVING AND PEARLSTONE (1966) - When cues where similar at remembering and retrieval, participants remembered 60% of the words compared to 40% when no cues were present
   • 2 MAIN FORMS
     • Context-dependant forgetting: When the external environment is different at recall from when it was coded.
       • GODDEN AND BADDELEY (1975) When deep water sea divers remembered something they were better at retrieving it in the same environment.
     • State - dependant forgetting: When a persons internal environment is dissimilar at recall to when information was encoded.
       • CARTER AND CASSIDY (1998) When participants learned and recalled something in the same mental state they recalled more information.
   • EVALUATION
     • 1. Lots of supporting evidence - Main reason for forgetting in the LTM. Supporting evidence increases the validity of the explanation. Also it occurs in real life situations.
     • 2. Cues are not the cause of retrieval - in reality cues are not very effective. This is because information being learnt is related to more than just a cue. Outshining hypothesis - a cues effectiveness is reduced by the present of better cues.
     • 3. Improving recall - Research into retrieval failure can be used to improve recall. eg. revising in the same room that the test will be taken.
     • 4. Problems with the Encoding Specificity Principle (ESP) - It is not possible to test whether a cue is actually encoded. If a cue does not result in successful recall, then we assume that it was not present at encoding

2. INTERFERENCE THEORY (IT)

   • 2 MAIN FORMS
     • Proactive interference: When older memories interfere with newer memories.
     • Retroactive interference: When a newer memory interferes with an older memory
       • MCGEOCH AND MCDONALD (1931) They changed the amount of similarity between two sets of materials. The group who learned similar information gave the worst recall. So interference is stronger when the memories are similar.
   • EVALUATION
     • 1. Supporting evidence from lab experiments - thousands of lab experiments have been conducted and the findings are all consistent.
     • 2. Effects of similarity - It only explains forgetting when the two sets of information are similar
     • 3.Interference effects may be overcome using cues - TULVING AND PSOTKA (1971) compared cue-dependence theory and interference theory. So interference may not be a valid explanation. If interference is correct the word should disappear from memory altogether.