Cue Dependency Theory

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Describe and Evaluate the Cue Dependent Theory of Forgetting According to Tulving (1975) cue dependent forgetting occurs when we have stored information but cannot access it because we lack the necessary cues to retrieve it. This theory argues that when we encode information we also encode details of the context and state that we were in at the time of encoding. These encoding cues act as extra information that guides us to the information we are trying to retrieve. Without these cues we find it difficult to get the information. The cue dependent theory of forgetting theorises that you never actually lose a memory, the memory is always there and that only the route to that memory is lost. Tulving calls these routes retrieval cues. These cues act as pointers or triggers when finding a memory. According to Tulving, the term cue dependent forgetting refers jointly to . State dependent . Context dependent For example, when you walk into a room and completely forget what you went in for, you might remember when you walk back into the room you were in when you thought of the idea. This is called context dependent forgetting and refers to environmental or contextual variables and represents external cues. However, if you go out one night and get drunk, the next morning you may have no idea what happened the previous night. This is an example of state dependent forgetting and refers to psychological or physiological factors that affect your memory, it represents internal cues. There is considerable evidence to support cue dependency theory of forgetting. For example, Godden and Baddeley (1975) found that divers could recall words better if they had learnt words in one environment and then recalled them in the same environment However the evidence often used to support cue dependency theory are experiments and may lack ecological validity as they test
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