I finished my psychology A-level last year with an A*. I have compiled a list of improvised essays I done as mocks and each of these essays fall into band 4 (13-16 marks)
Describe and evaluate how
retrieval failure due to the
absence of cues leads to
forgetting. (16 marks)
The encoding specificity principle, put forth by Tulving and Thomson in 1973, claimed
that memory is most successful when data that was present at the time of coding is also
present at the time of retrieval. They proposed that recall is aided by environmental and
psychological factors. Due to the lack of cues, there are two different types of retrieval
failure: context- and state-dependent failure. Failure is context-dependent when external
clues are absent, and failure is state-dependent when a person's emotional state is
different.
Godden and Baddeley (1975) used a sample of 18 individuals from a university diving
club to study how contextual cues affected recall. There were four different conditions:
learning words on land and recalling them on land, learning words on land and recalling
them underwater, learning words underwater and recalling them on land. Those learnt
underwater were found to be better remembered underwater, and words learned on
land were found to be better remembered on land. The concept of context-dependent
retrieval failure and the notion that context can improve recollection are both strongly
supported by these findings.
Godden and Baddeley's research contains significant methodological flaws, despite the
fact that it supports the concept of context-dependent retrieval failure. Every diver
participated in each of the four circumstances using a repeated measures method. The
divers may have understood the experiment's purpose and demonstrated demand
characteristics or order effects. By the fourth trial, the participants may have shown
tiredness effects, where their performance dropped due to boredom, or practise effects,
where their recollection improved as a result of repeatedly repeating the experiment.
Additionally, as there were only 18 divers in the sample, any conclusions drawn should
be used with caution. Furthermore, the severe situation that was addressed in their
Describe and evaluate how retrieval failure due to the absence of cues leads to forgetting. (16 marks) 1
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