Content deleted Content added
Line 16:
===Encoding Specificity and the Voluntary Retrieval of Autobiographical Memory===
In line with the encoding specificity principle, Marian and Neisser (2000) hypothesized that memories are more accessible when the language at retrieval, like other forms of context, matches the language at encoding. They explore this theory by utilizing 20 Russian-English bilingual students at Cornell University – 9 women and 11 men. Sixteen Russian-English cue word pairs were prepared, such that each member of the pairs was a direct translation of the other. Previous research showed that all words were effective prompts for autobiographical memory (''summer, neighbors, birthday,'' etc). Two word sets were used; half the participants received Set 1 in Russian and Set 2 in English, and half the participants received Set 1 in English and Set 2 in Russian. Participants were individually interviewed twice, once in each language in order to create a specific cultural ambiance. They were told to tell brief stories of specific life events and were prompted with words from the word sets to facilitate the process. The time between the onset of the prompt word and the beginning of the narrative response was recorded.
Marian and Neisser found that participants accessed more Russian memories when interviewed in Russian and more English memories when interviewed in English. They concluded, therefore, that the language used at the time of retrieval and the linguistic encoding-retrieval match influences which memories the bilingual participants will access. The researchers gave two possible reasons for this finding. First, the set 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, their finding may be due to the general language-created ambiance of the room rather than the specific associations to individual cue words. Therefore, memories are more accessible when the language of encoding and recall are similar rather than different; this is not only a result of associations to specific word prompts but also the overall linguistic ambiance and recall. Thus Marian and Neisser found results supporting Thomson and Tulving’s encoding specificity principle: memory recall is superior when two contexts are the same rather than different.
===Encoding Specificity and Drugs===
===Encoding Specificity and the Diagnosis of Disease===
| |||