Retrieval is the process of getting
information out of memory storage.
 Retrieval includes recall, which is the ability
to retrieve information not in conscious
awareness, something previously learned.
Example: fill in the blank questions
 Retrieval also includes recognition, which is
the ability to identify items previously
learned. Example: multiple choice test
questions
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Retrieval also includes a measure of how
quickly you can relearn previously learned
material
 Harry Bahrick (1975) reported that people
who had graduated 25 years earlier could
not recall many of their classmates, but
they could recognize 90 percent of their
pictures and names. Our recognition
memory is very quick and vast. We can
recognize many things without even
thinking.
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Your memories are woven like a web of
associations with all your memories
interconnected. When you encode a
piece of information(target information),
it is associated with other bits of
information.
 These bits of information are called
retrieval cues. Retrieval cues are points
that you can use to anchor and access
the target information at a later time.
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What can be a retrieval cue?
 Visual images, mnemonic devices,
associations we form involving taste,
smell, sights, sounds, etc.
 Priming is the awakening of associations,
often unconsciously, in our memory
 Priming can be memoryless memory—
invisible memory without explicit
remembering.
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In a study by Duncan Godden and Alan Baddeley
(1975), showed that we can recall information better
if it is retested in the same location that we learned it.
They had scuba divers listen to a list of words in two
different settings, either under water or on a beach.
When tested on their recall of the words the divers
performed better if in the same setting.
The percentages of recall were as follows:
Land/water 21%
Water/land 22%
Water/water 31%
Land/land 39%
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Even infants as young as 3 months old can
be impacted by context effects. Carolyn
Rovee-Collier (1993), performed several
experiments with infants. In one particular
study, the infants were placed in a crib with
a mobile. They were connected to the
mobile via a ribbon attached to their
ankles. This allowed the infant to move the
mobile by themselves. The infants kicked
more when retested in the same crib, with
the same bumper than when in a different
context.
Déjà vu is the sense that you have
experienced something before. Cues
from the current experience may trigger
retrieval of an earlier experience.
 In a study by Brown in 2003, it was
determined that although it happens to
many of us it is more common in young,
well educated adults especially when
they are under stress.
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So why does déjà vu happen?
 It may be that your current situation is full of memory cues
that unconsciously retrieve an old memory of a earlier,
similar event. Much of the information that your brain
takes in is without your awareness and you often forget
where the information in your memory came from. So, the
current situation may stir up memories that cause you to
believe that you have had this experience before.
 It could also be that a situation seems familiar when
moderately similar to several events (Lampinen,2002).
 Another theory, attributes déjà vu to our dual processing
system. The basic premise is that your processing of
information is occurring on multiple levels or tracks at the
same time. If one level or track were to be delayed, it
seems as though we are reexperiencing the event
(Brown,2004b).
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Our moods or states of being may
impact our ability to retrieve memories.
 State-dependent memory is a
phenomenon that you best remember
something if you are in the same state as
you were when you learned it.
 Mood states provide an example of this
phenomenon. Emotions that
accompany good or bad events can
become retrieval cues.
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Our memories are somewhat moodcongruent: the tendency to recall
experiences that are consistent with
one’s current mood state.
 Studies show that being in a bad mood
may facilitate recalling other bad times.
 Being depressed primes negative
associations, which then are used to
explain our current mood.
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People currently suffering from depression are
more likely to recall their parents as rejecting,
guilt-promoting and punitive, while formerly
depressed persons are more likely to recall as
do people who have never had
depression(Lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987).
In a study of adolescents in 1991, Bornstein
found that teens view their parents differently
dependent upon mood. Ratings of parental
warmth varied greatly from one week to a new
rating after six weeks. The ratings seemed
dependent upon the mood state of the teen.
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We are often upset about our failures of
memory. We are amazed at great feats of
memory and we seek to improve our own
memory. But what about forgetting? Is there
any reason to praise forgetting and why does
forgetting occur?
Some memory whizzes admit that their brains
are so full of trivial memory that they cannot
think. One such whiz, Shereshevskii (known as
S.)could memorize a story but could not
summarize its main points or meaning. There
was so much in his memory that he could not
summarize, generalize or think abstractly.
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Another example that points to the
positives of forgetting is the case of A.J.,
identified as Jill Price. Jill has the ability to
recall every day of her life since she was 14
with amazing clarity. She can remember
dates, where she was and what was said or
what occurred. This has been documented
through a study at UC at Irvine. She states
that it is exhausting to live in the present
and the past at the same time.
Daniel Schacter (1999) has listed the
seven ways our memories fail us. He calls
them the seven sins of memory.
 Three sins of forgetting:
 Absent-mindedness: inattention to detail
leads to forgetting
 Transience: storage decay over time
 Blocking: inaccessibility of stored
information
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Three sins of distortion:
 Misattribution: confusing the source of
the information
 Suggestibility: the lingering effects of
misinformation
 Bias: belief colored recollections
 One sin of intrusion:
 Persistence: unwanted memories
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Encoding failure is a process of age. As we
age the parts of the brain that encode
information work less efficiently. This leads to
a general age related memory decline.
 Encoding failure also occurs because our
brains are bombarded with so much
information that we cannot possibly
encode it all. We selectively attend to only
a few of the many pieces of information.
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How many details can you recall concerning
the a penny? Could you identify a real penny
in a penny line-up?
In a study(1979), Nickerson and Adams
discovered that most people cannot identify
the real penny. When asked, spontaneously
without prompting, most people could only
recall three of the eight critical features.
Why? The features of the penny are not crucial
to us, so unless we have made an effort to
encode them, it is unlikely that we will recall
them. (effortful processing)
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Ebbinghaus created the forgetting curve during his
experiment on learning novel verbal information. The
forgetting curve has been supported by other later
experiments.
The forgetting curve shows that the course of
forgetting is initially rapid but levels off over time.
Henry Bahrick (1984) studied the forgetting curve for
people who learned Spanish in high school.
Compared with people who had just completed a
course in Spanish, people three years out of school
had forgotten much of what they had learned.
However, what people knew at three years out, they
still remembered 25 years later. Their forgetting had
leveled off.
Why does the forgetting curve look as it
does?
 One explanation is the gradual fading of a
physical memory trace. Cognitive
neuroscientists are still investigating the
physical storage of memory and daily our
understanding of how storage decay could
occur is increasing.
 Another theory is that the accumulation of
learning disrupts our ability to retrieve
information previously encoded.
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Retrieval failure can be about:
 1) memories never encoded
 2) memories that were
discarded(storage decay)
 3) inaccessible because we do not have
enough information to look it up (tip of
the tongue), the memory is there but we
may need retrieval cues to be able to
retrieve it
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Interference refers to the situation where learning one
item may interfere with your ability to retrieve another
item from your memory.
Proactive interference (forward-acting) occurs when
something you learned earlier disrupts your ability to
recall something you experience later. For example if
you get a new phone number, you memory of the
earlier number may interfere with your ability to recall
the new number.
Your brain’s capacity to remember is vast and
unfillable but it can become cluttered with
unnecessary information. Focus is aided by tuning out
the clutter. In this case forgetting would be adaptive.
Retroactive interference (backward-acting) occurs when
learning new information makes it more difficult to
remember previously learned information.
 Information learned before sleep is protected from
retroactive interference because the opportunity for any
interference is limited.
 Dallenbach and Jenkins (1924), studied this concept. They
gave participants random syllables to learn. Some
followed learning with 8 hours of sleep, some with 8 hours
of awake. Forgetting was more common in the awake
state. The researchers believed that this was due to
interference from events that occurred while awake.
 Other studies have confirmed that an hour before sleep is
a good time to commit new information to memory.
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Interference is a real reason why we may
forget certain information.
 However, previous knowledge can be
beneficial. It is called positive transfer. For
example, knowing Latin may help you
learn French.
 Interference occurs when the old and
the new compete.
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Memory can be an unreliable, selfserving historian. (Tavris & Aronson, 2007)
 We often unknowingly revise our history.
In 1981, Ross and colleagues found that
people who had been told the benefits
of tooth brushing recalled (more than
others) frequently brushing their teeth in
the previous two week period.
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Why do our memories fail us?
It could be a failure to encode, or a storage problem,
or an inability to retrieve. But some, including Freud,
would argue that some memories are repressed.
Freud believed that we repress memories in order to
preserve our self-concept or to minimize anxiety.
Efforts to intentionally forget neutral events are often
successful, but it is difficult to forget emotional
information, which is why traumatic events often
intrude upon our memory even when we try to
forget. Although many believe that repression of
memory occurs, large and growing numbers of
memory researchers say that it rarely does.