Encoding specificity principle: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:08, 13 August 2020

Revision as of 21:20, 8 September 2020

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'''Language and the voluntary retrieval of autobiographical memories'''

[[Autobiographical memory|Autobiographical memories]] are more accessible when the language at encoding and recall match.<ref name="Autobiographical memory">{{cite journal|last=Marian|first=Viorica|author2=Ulric Neisser|s2cid=4107490|title=Language Dependent recall of autobiographical memories|journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology|year=2000|volume=129|issue=3|pages=361–368|doi=10.1037/0096-3445.129.3.361 |pmid=11006905}}</ref> Researchers conducted interviews with Russian and English speaking bilingual students in both languages and asked participants to retrieve the first memory that comes to mind when hearing a generic word in either language. They found that when presented with Russian-language cues, participants recalled memories that occurred in a Russian-speaking environment and when presented with English-language cues, they easily recalled memories from English-speaking contexts.<ref name="Autobiographical memory" /> This is first because the cue words may have been spoken during the original event that the participant was remembering; hearing the word at encoding and again at retrieval may have been a sufficient cue to bring the memory to mind. Second, this phenomenon may be due to the general language-created ambiance of the situation in which participants were tested rather than the specific associations to individual cue words.<ref name="Autobiographical memory" />

== Specific Examples ==

=== Diagnosis of disease ===

Patients with [[Alzheimer's disease]] (AD) are unable to effectively process the semantic relationship between two words at encoding to assist in the retrieval process.<ref name="Alzheimer's granholm">{{cite journal|last=Granholm|first=Eric|author2=Nelson Butters|title=Associative encoding and retrieval in Alzheimer's and Huntington's Disease|journal=Brain and Cognition|year=1988|volume=7|issue=3|pages=335–347|doi=10.1016/0278-2626(88)90007-3|pmid=2969744|s2cid=20415261}}</ref> The general population benefits equally from a weakly related cue word as from a strongly related cue word during a recall task, provided the weakly related word was present at encoding. Patients with AD, however, were unable to benefit from the weakly related cue even if it was present at both encoding and retrieval.<ref name="Alzheimer's granholm" /> Instead of relying upon semantic encoding, those with AD presented their most dominant associations to the cue words during recall test. This explains why all AD patients performed well when two strong words were matched together but very poorly when a strong and weak pairs were presented during recall. Deficits in episodic memory are now widely accepted as a characteristic symptom of Alzheimer's disease.<ref name="Alzheimers RI-48">{{cite journal|author=Adam, S.|author2=M. Van der Linden|author3=A Ivanoiu|author4=A.-C. Juillerat|author5=S. Bechet|author6=E. Salmon|year=2007|title=Optimization of encoding specificity for the diagnosis of early AD: The RI-48 task|journal=Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology|volume=29|issue=5|pages=477–487|doi=10.1080/13803390600775339|pmid=17564913|s2cid=31325865|url=http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/28214}}</ref>

=== Alcohol ===

Information encoded and stored while intoxicated, see [[state-dependent memory]], is retrieved more effectively when an individual is intoxicated as compared to being sober. State-dependent memory is one example of encoding specificity. If an individual encodes information while intoxicated he or she, ideally, should match that state when attempting to recall the encoded information. This type of state-dependent effect is strongest with free recall rather than when strong retrieval cues are present.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Eich|first=James Eric|date=March 1980|title=The cue-dependent nature of state-dependent retrieval|journal=Memory & Cognition|volume=8|issue=2|pages=157–173|doi=10.3758/bf03213419|pmid=7382817|issn=0090-502X|doi-access=free}}</ref>

This finding is a variation of the context-dependency effect of the encoding specificity principle and is much more apparent with low-imagery words than high-imagery words. Both high and low imagery words, however, are less likely to be recalled while intoxicated due to the inherent nature of intoxication.<ref name="alcohol">{{cite journal|last=Weingartner|first=Herbert|author2=Wolansa Adefras|author3=James E. Eich|author4=Dennis L. Murphy|year=1976|title=Encoding-imagery specificity in alcohol state-dependent learning|journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory|volume=2|issue=1|pages=83–87|doi=10.1037/0278-7393.2.1.83|pmid=1249533}}</ref> This principle demonstrates the significance of encoding specificity; the contextual state of intoxication provides retrieval cues and information that are superior to and outweigh the negative effects on memory from a depressant substance that activates GABA and inhibits neurotransmission. In this regard, this encoding specific context trumps the importance of such neural brain activity.

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==Criticism==

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 Thompson 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>