What techniques can be used to measure retrieval?
Free recall, cued recall, recognition and relearning.
According to Nelson (1978), which retrieval technique is the most sensitive?
Relearning (then recognition, then cued recall, then free recall).
What did Tulving and Psotka (1971) find regarding the difference between free and cued recall?
On lists of 24 words (6 categories, 4 in each), with a number of lists after the tested one (interference), free recall gradually decreased, while cued recall was slightly higher, then increased after 1 list, subsequently decreasing to about the level of the first free recall point.
What conclusion can be made from Tulving and Psotka (1971)?
Cued recall is less susceptible to interference.
What is the generate-recognise theory of free recall?
Anderson and Bower (1972) - mnemonic techniques like the pegword method or the method of loci work because they enable people to provide cues and consequently generate candidates for recognition.
What is the problem with the generate-recognise theory of free recall?
Research suggests that it doesn’t work - logically, it follows that recognition should be part of recall, but Tulving and Thomson (1973) demonstrated recognition failure - that not every item that can be recalled is recognised.
What method was used by Tulving and Thomson (1973)?
Given paired associates (cues are weak associates) to learn.
Then recognition condition - asked to produce 4 associates to cues which are strong associates, then asked if they recognise any of them.
Followed by recall condition - given half of associated pairs.
What did Tulving and Thomson (1973) find?
- recall is better than recognition
- many words are recalled that were not recognised.
How are Tulving and Thomson (1973)’s findings explained?
- cued recall task is very easy - weak associates
- recognition task is very difficult - all the semantic associates seem very similar, and there’s the self-generation effect (Slameka and Graf, 1978)
What conclusions can be drawn from Tulving and Thomson (1973)?
- Recall can produce better memory than recognition if it provides better retrieval cues.
- Sometimes the item itself isn’t actually the best cue for identifying the context in which it was previously encountered.
- The generate-recognise approach may often be used in free recall tasks, but it is not a complete model of all recall (e.g. cued recall).
What is the encoding specificity principle (Tulving, 1983)?
The idea that memory performance is best when the cues present at test match those that were encoded with the memory at study (Morris, Bransford and Franks, 1977).
What effect is explained by the encoding specificity principle?
Context dependent memory.
What did Gordon and Baddeley (1975) do?
Investigated context dependent memory - got divers to memorise a list of words either on land or underwater, then recall them also on land or underwater.
What did Gordon and Baddeley (1975) find?
A change of context impairs recall - this suggests that cues from the environment have been integrated into the encoding.
What did Gordon and Baddeley (1980) state?
That the same context dependent memory effect is not found in recognition.
What did Goodwin et al. (1960) do?
Investigated state dependent memory - the internal state of the subject (drunk or sober) with a 2x2 design similar to Gordon and Baddeley (1975).
What did Goodwin et al. (1969) find?
That alcohol generally impairs memory, but there is a strong state dependency effect.
Can state dependent memory be extended to other, less extreme, internal states?
Perhaps - mood dependent memory is very difficult to investigate, effect is weak. However mood congruent memory is much more robust.
What is mood congruent memory?
The fact that we tend to recall information congruent with our current mood.
How is mood congruent memory investigated?
Through using the Velten procedure - participants read either positive or negative statements before being asked to recall positive, negative or neutral words.
What did Teasdale and Russell (1983) find?
Mood congruency effect - more positive words remembered when elated, more negative when depressed.
What steps does the cognitive interview technique involve?
- Mentally reinstate event context (scene, thoughts, preceding events).
- Report EVERY detail.
- Report in different temporal orders.
- Describe from different viewpoints.
What did Geiselman et al. (1986) do?
Had participants watch a violent films and then gave them a standard or cognitive interview 2 days later.
What did Geiselman et al. (1986) find?
Standard interview yielded 29.4 correct items, cognitive 41.2, with no difference in number of errors.
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False memories - the reconstructive nature of memory21
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Encoding in the real world21
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Enhancing encoding31
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Storage and interference26
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Repression and retention28
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Active forgetting: inhibition24
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Retrieval33
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Types of retrieval35
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Autobiographical memory30
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The reliability and unreliability of human memory30
