Encoding specificity principle: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:00, 2 September 2022

Revision as of 18:22, 22 May 2023

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==Development of the Concept==

[[Hermann Ebbinghaus|Ebbinghaus]], a pioneer of research into memory, noted that associations between items aids recall of information thus the internal context of a list matters. This is because we look for any connection that helps us combine items into meaningful units. This started a lot of research into lists of to-be-remembered (tbr) words, and cues that helped them. In 1968 Tulving and Osler made participants memorise a list of 24 tbr words in the absence or presence of cue words. The cue words facilitated recall when present in the input and output of memorising and recalling the words. They concluded that specific retrieval cues can aid recall if the information of their relation to the tbr words is stored at the same time as the words on the list.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Tulving|first1=Endel|last2=Osler|first2=Shirley|date=1968|title=Effectiveness of retrieval cues in memory for words.|journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology|volume=77|issue=4|pages=593–601|doi=10.1037/h0026069|pmid=5672271|issn=0022-1015}}</ref> Tulving and ThompsonThomson studied the effect of the change in context of the tbr by adding, deleting and replacing context words. This resulted in a reduction in the level of recognition performance when the context changed, even though the available information remained context. This led to the encoding specificity principle.<ref name=":0" />

==Role of Semantics==

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James S. Nairne of Purdue University is the primary opponent of Thomson and Tulving's encoding specificity principle.<ref name=Textbook /> He argues that the encoding-retrieval match is correlational rather than causal and states that many cognitive psychologists consider the principle to be "sacrosanct".<ref name=nairne>{{cite journal|last=Nairne|first=James S.|title=The myth of the encoding-retrieval match|journal=Memory|year=2002|volume=10|issue=5/6|pages=389–395|doi=10.1080/09658210244000216|pmid=12396651|citeseerx=10.1.1.377.6640|s2cid=8085159}}</ref> Nairne suggests that what determines successful memory is cue distinctiveness. He says that good memory may be produced even if there is almost no encoding-retrieval overlap, provided the minimal overlap is highly distinctive.<ref name=nairne /> He characterizes memory as an "active process of discrimination"<ref name=nairne /> and proposes that we use cues to choose between several retrieval candidates. Increasing the encoding-retrieval match improves memory performance, he believes, but only because it increases the probability that distinctive features will come into play.<ref name=nairne />

Phillip Higham has also criticised the design and interpretation of ThompsonThomson and Tulving's original experiments which used strong and weak cues to generate the encoding specificity principle. He states that the use of forced-report retrieval may have resulted in participants responding to the cues positively, not due to them being encoded at the time of learning but due to pre-experimentally derived associations. Suggesting that the word on the list 'came to mind' at the time of the experiment and that anyone could have given the positive answer. This is seen as even more likely with strong cues. This is known as the 'lucky guessing' criticism.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Higham|first=Philip A.|date=January 2002|title=Strong cues are not necessarily weak: Thomson and Tulving (1970) and the encoding specificity principle revisited|journal=Memory & Cognition|volume=30|issue=1|pages=67–80|doi=10.3758/bf03195266|pmid=11958356|issn=0090-502X|doi-access=free}}</ref>

In 1975 [[Leo Postman]] conducted experiments on the encoding specificity principle to check the generalisability of the concept. The first experiment focused on the normative strength go the cues presented on the encoding and recall of words and the second on the presence of weak cues in seconding and recall. The results of the experiments failed to support the encoding specificity principle as strong extra-list cues facilitated the recall of tbr words in the presence of weak encoded cues and recall of the original weak encoded cues failed to be recognised in the context of new strong cues.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Postman|first=Leo|date=November 1975|title=Tests of the generality of the principle of encoding specificity|journal=Memory & Cognition|volume=3|issue=6|pages=663–672|doi=10.3758/bf03198232|pmid=24203908|issn=0090-502X|doi-access=free}}</ref>