Retrieval & Forgetting
- Distinguish recall, recognition, and the role of retrieval cues
- Explain the major causes of forgetting, including interference
- Describe how memories can be reconstructed and distorted
Retrieval and its cues
Getting information out is retrieval. Recall means producing information without cues (a fill-in-the-blank); recognition means identifying it among options (multiple choice) and is far easier. Retrieval is aided by cues — associations that lead back to a memory. Context-dependent memory means we recall better in the setting where we learned (divers recalled word lists better underwater if they learned underwater — Godden and Baddeley). State-dependent and mood-congruent memory work similarly: our internal state or mood at retrieval, matching the state at encoding, improves recall.
Why we forget
Forgetting has several causes. Encoding failure means the information never entered long-term memory. Storage decay is the fading of memory over time — Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve showed rapid early loss that then levels off. Retrieval failure means the memory is there but inaccessible (the tip-of-the-tongue state). Interference is a major cause: proactive interference is when old learning disrupts new (your old password blocks the new one), while retroactive interference is when new learning disrupts old (a new phone number crowds out the previous one).
Memory as reconstruction
Memory is not a recording but a reconstruction, rebuilt each time and vulnerable to distortion. Elizabeth Loftus’s research on the misinformation effect showed that leading questions reshape memory — participants who were asked how fast cars "smashed" (versus "hit") reported higher speeds and even false broken glass. Loftus also demonstrated the implanting of entirely false memories ("lost in the mall"). Source amnesia — misremembering where information came from — helps explain why eyewitness testimony, though confident, can be unreliable.
A student who learned Spanish in high school now takes French in college and keeps accidentally inserting Spanish words when trying to speak French. Identify the type of interference and explain the direction of the disruption.
- 1.Identify what is being disrupted: the student is trying to use new learning (French) but old learning (Spanish) intrudes.
- 2.Match to the definition: when previously learned information disrupts the recall of newer information, that is proactive interference.
- 3.Confirm the direction: "pro-" means forward — the old memory acts forward in time to block the new one.
- 4.Contrast with the alternative: if new French were instead causing her to forget old Spanish, that would be retroactive interference.
After moving, a person keeps writing their old address instead of the new one they are trying to memorize. This is an example of:
Do not flip the interference terms. Proactive = old blocks new (old acts forward); retroactive = new blocks old (new acts backward). Trace which memory is being disrupted — the target you are trying to recall — and then ask whether the intruder is older or newer.
After witnessing a crash, participants who were asked how fast the cars were going when they "smashed into" each other later recalled seeing broken glass that was never there. This best demonstrates:
When a question describes leading questions, false details, or unreliable eyewitnesses, the answer is almost always Loftus / the misinformation effect and memory as reconstruction. Confidence does not equal accuracy — a favorite exam point.
Answer the 2 checkpoints as you read.
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