AMBER GEHANI

Natasha had studied a lot for her A-level Drama performance, mostly practising lines from a
play alone in her room. However, once on stage in front of her teacher and the examiners,
Natasha struggled to remember her lines. Instead, she kept quoting lines from a different
play she had once learnt for GCSE. Discuss retrieval failure and interference as
explanations for forgetting. Refer to Natasha’s drama performance in your answer.

There are two explanations to why we forget information one is interference and the other
retrieval failure. Interference occurs when two pieces of information conflict with each
other resulting in forgetting one or both memories or distortion in memory. Retrieval failure
is another form of forgetting when the necessary cues to access memories aren’t present,
the memory is available but can’t be accessed until a suitable cue is provided. Cues are
triggers of information which allow us to access memories and they can be external or
internal, when information is initially stored associated cues are also stored at the same
time.

One explanation for Natasha forgetting her lines on stage is interference. There are two
types of interference, proactive interference and retroactive interference. Proactive
interference happens when older memories that are already stored disrupt the recall of new
memories, for example a teacher having learnt so many students’ names in the past she
forgets the names of her current students). On the other hand, retroactive interference
happens when new memories disrupt the recall of older memories already stored, for
example when a teacher learnt so many new names this year forgets names of previous
students). Natasha struggling to remember her lines for her A-level drama performance is
an example of proactive interference, as the old memories of her GCSE drama lines
disrupted the recall of her new A-level lines.

Interference is a good explanation for forgetting as there is evidence from lab studies which
is a strength because lab experiments have control over variables so suggest that the results
are valid. There are also real-life studies which help support the idea of interference, for
example Baddeley and Hitch in 1977 wanted to see if interference was a better explanation
for forgetting than the passage of time. They asked rugby players to recall the names of
teams they had played in that season so far. Some players had less names to recall. Finding
show that recall didn’t depend on how long ago the games took place but the number of
games they had played. This helps prove interference can be applied to everyday situations
and there is high ecological validity. However, the issue with interference is that the
research can be artificial as most of the research isn’t helpful to be applied to real life.

The other explanation for Natasha forgetting her lines on stage is retrieval failure. There are
two types of retrieval failure context dependent forgetting and state dependent forgetting.
Context dependent forgetting is when the external cues at time of encoding don’t match
those present at recall. The other type of retrieval failure is state dependent forgetting
which is when internal cues at them time of encoding don’t match those present at recall.
Therefore, Natasha forgetting her A-level lines once on the stage in front of her teacher and
examiner can be explained because of context dependent forgetting as the external cues of
her environment (the room she is in) and the audience don’t match the ones at recall when
she learned it in her bedroom. The loss of these cues could have impacted her performance
causing her to forget her lines.
Retrieval failure is another good explanation for forgetting as there is research to support.
There is research to support for the theory such as the study by Godden and Baddeley in
1975 which shows how the impact of cues affects recall of information. They did research on
divers and made them learn a list of words either underwater or on land and then had to
recall these words either underwater or on land. This created 4 conditions.
Two conditions had matching environmental contexts of learning and recall, the other two
didn’t. In non-matching conditions accurate recall was 40% lower. The external cues
available at learning were different from the ones at recall which cause retrieval failure.
However, on the other hand these studies lack ecological validity as the research isn’t lab
based and doesn’t test every day memory and abilities.