PSYC 2501 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Free Recall, Encoding Specificity Principle
26 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Long Term Memory Retrieval
• Retrieval: getting information out of memory
o Retrieval cues
• Experiment
▪
Acquisition
Memory test
instruction
Percent
words
recalled
Free recall
group
List of words
presented
"Recall the words"
40%
Cued
recall
group
List of words
presented
"Recall the words. The
categories were
birds…"
75%
• Retrieval cues aid memory
o Matching conditions of encoding and retrieval
• Context
▪ Surroundings in which event occurred
▪ Principle of encoding specificity
• We encode information along with its context
• Matching with context aids in retrieval
▪ Scuba Diving experiment
• Studied a list of words underwater or on land, then tested
recall underwater or on land
• On land on land was best, underwater underwater second
best, but on land underwater or vice versa equally bad
• Internal state
▪ Such as mood, can also affect retrieval
• State-dependent learning
▪ Had people listen to sad music and think (either happy or sad
thoughts) or listen to happy music and think (happy or sad)
• If listening to happy, easier to be happy, sad easier to be sad
• Transfer appropriate processing
▪ Encoding study
• Conditions
• Rhyming condition: "Does train rhyme with pain" or
• Meaning condition: does this work? "the train had a silver
engine"
• Retrieval test
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