Encoding specificity principle

The encoding specificity principle, a theory in cognitive psychology, is used to explain variability in memory retention; it is the concept that memory is improved when information available at encoding is also available at retrieval. According to Melton^[1] , the elaborate process of memory may be broken down into three stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding refers to the process in which information is studied and taken in. A deep semantic processing of information leads to enhanced encoding that is most effective for long-term storage.1 Storage involves the retention of information over time and the formation of a memory representation, also known as a memory trace. However, memory critically depends upon retrieval, which refers to one’s ability to extract information from memory once it has been successfully encoded and stored.

The success of retrieval depends heavily upon what types of retrieval cues are present. Donald M. Thomson and Endel Tulving first proposed the idea that retrieval will be most successful if information available at encoding is also present at retrieval, regardless of how strongly the cues are related to the to-be-remembered words. They theorized that “the memory trace of an event and hence the properties of effective retrieval cue are determined by the specific encoding operations performed by the system on the input stimuli.”2 This hypothesis for understanding how contextual information affects the retrieval of an episodic memory has been proven in a plethora of studies and is now known as the encoding specificity principle.

Initial Findings

Two-Phase Prompted Recall

The most prominent method for testing and proving the encoding specificity principle was created by a researcher named Harry P. Bahrick from Ohio Wesleyan University. The study dealt with the proposal of a system called the Two-Phase Model for Prompted Recall. In the model, Bahrick presented empirical data relating the benefits of using word-pair associations rather than free recall, in which a participant has no context with which to recall a target word. The study measured the increased ability to recall target words when presented with a cue word presented both at encoding as well as recall phases of memory. Bahrick found that prompting a target word with the paired word that is associated with the target was more easily recalled. The study proved that both episodic and semantic modes of encoding were effective. Episodic memory was beneficial due to the participant being able to not only recall the paired target word more effectively, but also recognize it more accurately. By testing the effectiveness of different semantically related cue words, Bahrick also proved that a semantic component aided recall. Both of these modes of encoding are more likely to help a participant recall a target word, and replaced free recall as the most prominent method of association testing. The table below demonstrates the increasing relatedness of cue words and the increased accuracy of recall of the given words.

Paired-associate list and four types of prompters

Stimulus	Response	1 (.01-.08)	2 (.09-.21)	3 (.23-.36)	4 (.38-.59)
TIME	blue	velvet (.03)	grey (.1)	green (.28)	azure (.58)
SHOE	book	print (.02)	comic (.15)	read (.35)	chapter (.59)
TOP	chair	leg (.02)	cushion (.09)	upholstery (.36)	furniture (.48)
WENT	telephone	pole (.04)	extension (.17)	communication (.33)	dial (.59)
TILE	girl	child (.03)	cute (.18)	feminine (.26)	coed (.54)

Thomson and Tulving Initial Experiment

In 1973, Endel Tulving and Donald M. Thompson released a study commenting on the connection between context-dependent word pairs (cued recall). They also studied the difference between the semantic memory encoding process and an episodic memory encoding process. The researchers proposed that if a word pair consisting of a target word and a cue word was presented to a participant, the best recall for the target word will be the cue word even if the two are not semantically similar. They hypothesize that the unrelated cue word presented with the target word at encoding will be a more effective recall cue for the target word than a strong semantically related word that was not present at encoding. For example, if the word pair chair-glue was presented, the cue glue would more rapidly trigger the target, chair, than would a word that was semantically related to the word “chair,” simply because both were present at encoding and retrieval.

To explore this hypothesis, Thompson and Tulving’s experiment focused on three categories of words: Target words (the desired response when a cue was presented), strong cues (words that are semantically linked to the target words), and weak cues (words that are presented alongside target words in the original word pair). The results of the experiment validated Thompson and Tulving’s hypothesis. 24% of all strong cue-target word pairs (semantically linked, not simultaneously presented) were correctly identified. However, when participants were presented with the weak word cue that was originally present at encoding, they were able to correctly identify the target word 63% of the time, even though the target word and cue word were weakly semantically related. This is a 39% increase in accuracy compared to the semantically related cue-target pairs. Tulving and Thomson found, therefore, that change in context mattered for memory retrieval. It was based upon these findings that Tulving and Thomson were able to propose the encoding specificity principle.

Basic Methods

Cued recall experiments using word lists provided initial evidence for the encoding specificity principle, proving that “given a particular encoding context, memory is better when retrieval reinstates that context.”3 Carefully constructed word lists are typically used as the basic setup for these types of memory experiments. These lists are presented to participants under controlled conditions, and participant memory is tested with standard memory tasks, including free recall and recognition. These traditional types of memory research focus on a participant’s specific memory content. 3

In a quintessential study by Thomson and Tulving, participants were told to encode word pairs, such as plant-bug. The second word in the pair was the target word to be remembered. A long list of such weakly related word pairs was encoded, after which participants were given a cued-recall test with two separate retrieval conditions. In one condition, a strongly related word was given to cue the target. Insect, for example, would be given to cue bug. In the second condition, the original word plant was given as the cue for bug. Participants were much more successful at identifying the target word in the second condition when their cue for retrieval was plant. This is because the event that must be retrieved is the episodic memory of encountering the word pair plant-bug. Thomson and Tulving were then able to conclude the relationship between semantic and episodic memory dictates the effectiveness of the reactivation of certain specific encoding situations. For instance, in this experiment, the cue insect best triggers a semantic memory due to the word’s categorical relatedness whereas the word plant will cue the episode in which the participant encoded the word bug.

Specific Results

Role of Semantics in Encoding Specificity

Hannon and Craik of University of Toronto explored the role of semantics in episodic memory for word lists. They knew, from previous studies, that a semantically related cue should be effective in retrieving a word provided the semantic cue was encoded along with the target word. If the semantically related word was not present at the time of encoding, it will not be efficient at cuing recall for the target word. The encoding specificity paradigm that Hannon and Craik used followed Thomson and Tulving’s model: an encoding phase, a generation phase, a recognition phase for words previously generated, and a cued recall phase. In the encoding phase, weakly associated word pairs were presented (whisky-WATER) and participants were instructed to learn the capitalized words, noting that the preceding word may help with later memory retrieval. This biases the capitalized word toward a specific meaning. In this case, WATER would be thought of as a drink, rather than a lake or ocean for example. In the generation phase, words such as lake were presented. This word emphasizes water as something you swim in rather than drink. Participants were told to generate four related words (water, swim, cup, blue for example) related to lake. During the recognition test, participants were told to identify, from their generated list, the word that was originally capitalized during the encoding phase. Lastly, participants participated in a cued recall task where they were presented with the original cue (whisky). A strong superiority of cued recall over recognition was observed because pairs like whisky-WATER were encoded in a way that made whisky an effective cue but lake fairly ineffective. Hannon and Craik reconstructed this experiment and found results that match Thomson and Tulvings: semantics do not always play a role in encoding specificity; memory, rather, depends upon the context at encoding and retrieval.

Encoding Specificity and the Immediate Environment

Multiple studies have shown a dependence on context of one's environment as an aid to recall specific items and events.

Physical Environment

Several experiments have revealed context-dependency effects for the encoding specificity principle. D.R. Godden and A.D. Baddeley (1975) wished to research if the physical environment in which an event occurs is part of the memory representation for that event. They hypothesize that a change in environments between encoding and retrieval would be detrimental to memory due to an encoding-retrieval mismatch. Eighteen subjects participated in their study – 13 male and five female members of a university diving club. Five lists of words were recorded on tape; each comprised of 36 unrelated words chosen at random. Divers encoded the words either underwater or on a beach. Later, recall was tested in the environment of original encoding or the alternative environment. The researchers’ results supported the encoding specificity principle: what was learned on the beach was better recalled on the beach, and vice versa.

This context-dependency effect, however, was only observed when employing free-recall methods. The effect was not seen when Godden and Baddeley tested memory with recognition in their 1980 study. This is explained by what is termed the outshining hypothesis: context can be a useful cue for memory but only when it is needed. One will only turn to context as a cue when better cues are unavailable. In recognition tests, cues other than the immediate encoding context and environment are superior, whereas in free-recall tests, the immediate environment serves as the only cue to trigger memory.

Auditory Environment

Grant, Bredahl, Clay, Ferrie, Groves, McDorman, and Dark (1988) suggest that the effects of context-dependency also apply to meaningful text material rather than simply lists of unrelated words. They hypothesize that student’s study habits may be harming their exam performance: a typical college student’s study environment often includes background noise while test environments are typically quieter. This mismatch at encoding and retrieval may be detrimental to test performance. To test their predictions, Grant et. al. recruited 39 participants ranging from 17 to 56 years in age. There were 17 females and 23 males. Each participant was to study a basic article on psychoimmunology while wearing headphones. Half the participants would be listening to nothing, while the other half would hear a general conversational hum recorded in a school cafeteria. 16 multiple-choice questions and ten short answer questions were generated to test the material. The short answer test was administered first to ensure that recall from the article rather than recall from the multiple-choice test was being tested. The researchers found that there were context-dependency effects for the newly learned meaningful material independent of test type. In addition, participants who studied with background noise recalled just as much information as students studying in silence. However, whether or not participants studied in the presence of music or not, they always performed better on the test when they were in the same environment for both encoding and retrieval.

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 the Diagnosis of Disease

Many studies that have employed the encoding-specificity paradigm have also shown that 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. For example, in their 1988 study, Granholm and Butters generated a list of 60 words divided into groups of three. Each triad consisted of a to-be-remembered word, a strong associate, and a weak associate. Five experimental conditions were designed: O-O, S-S, W-W, W-S, and S-W. In the S-S condition, each to-be-remembered word was accompanied by a strong word at presentation and a strong word at retrieval. In the S-W condition, a strong associate at presentation and a weak associate at retrieval accompanied each to-be-remembered word, etc. (alzheimers granholm and butters article)

The researchers found, in congruence with the encoding specificity principle, that control subjects benefitted as much from a weakly related cue word as 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. (Salmon) 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. (granholm butters) Deficits in episodic memory are now widely accepted as a characteristic symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. (diagnosis of early AD article)

Encoding Specificity and Drugs

Weingartner et. al. (1976) explore the topic of encoding specificity in alcohol state-dependent learning. 11 female volunteers participated in their study. They ranged from 21 to 35 years old, were between 120 and 125 pounds, and were all occasional social drinkers. 80 frequently occurring English words were randomly chosen to construct four word-recall lists. Half the words in each list were low imagery nouns; the other half were high imagery nouns. Subjects, all of whom were experiencing a moderate to intense level of intoxication, were required to listen to a word list and immediately write down all the words they could remember. Four hours later, they were asked to freely recall the words. All subjects performed the experiment under four separate conditions: S-S (learning and immediate recall while sober, and sober recall four hours later), S-I (learning and immediate recall while sober and later recall while intoxicated), I-S (learning and immediate recall while intoxicated and later recall while sober), and I-I (learning and immediate recall while intoxicated and later recall while intoxicated).

Weingartner et. al. found that both high and low imagery words were less likely to be recalled if they were stored while the participant was intoxicated rather than sober. However, information encoded and stored while intoxicated was retrieved more effectively when later recall tests were performed while intoxicated as compared recall while sober. This finding was much more apparent with low-imagery words than high-imagery words. This experiment supports the context-dependency effect of the encoding specificity principle referred to earlier.

Encoding Specificity and Advertising

In 1993, Friestad and Thorson conducted a study examining how a person’s emotional states and the inherent nature of television advertisements affected recall of ads. It was designed to contribute to the understanding of memory for advertisements. The researchers utilized the encoding specificity principle and previously known information about advertising to direct their hypothesis: emotionally driven commercials are less memorable and recallable than neutral advertisements. 123 subjects viewed one of three versions of a 20 minute tape containing program material, extraneous ads, and the 10 target ads (five emotional and five neutral). After doing a distractor task to deteriorate short-term memory for the ads, subjects were given a surprise recall test. They were given 20 retrieval cues (two per target ad) and were to respond with a verbal description of the ad that came to mind. They were then instructed to write down their emotional responses to the ads, their attention levels, their opinion on product-use, and their prior exposure to the ads.

All aspects of this experiment were analyzed in light of the encoding specificity principle and the distinction between episodic and semantic memory structures. The researchers found that when the nature of the advertisement was emotional, an encoding focus on episodic memory (trying to carefully remember the visual content of the commercial) led to a much higher rate of recall. Conversely, when advertisements were neutral in emotional nature, a semantic encoding of memory (how advertisement shapes personal perceptions, preferences of given object advertised) led to a much higher recall of specific advertisements. The experimenters claim that “applying a theoretical model of how encoding and retrieval processes affect the accessibility of ad memory traces helps us understand the ‘communication effects’ that occur during and after consumers’ processing of TV advertising’”^1. This empirical evidence regarding the nature of emotional advertising provides data to the advertising industry as to how to contour their ads to maximize recall of advertisements.

Encoding Specificity and Social Cognition

Criticism

James S. Nairne of Purdue University is the primary opponent of Thomson and Tulving’s encoding specificity principle. He argues that the encoding-retrieval match is correlational rather than causal and states that many cognitive psychologists consider the principle to be “sacrosanct” (from article). 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. (book) He characterizes memory as an “active process of discrimination” 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.

Margaret Cookson (talk) 16:36, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

The encoding specificity principle is a theory about human memory in cognitive psychology. The theory states that retrieval cues will be most effective if they contain features that overlap with the to-be-remembered memory trace, which in turn has features that are primarily determined by the specific conditions of its initial encoding. The concept was developed by the memory researcher Endel Tulving.

Tulving's theory of "encoding specificity" emphasizes the importance of retrieval cues in accessing episodic memories. The theory states that effective retrieval cues must overlap with the to-be-retrieved memor y trace. Because the contents of the memory trace are primarily established during the initial encoding of the experience, retrieval cues will be maximally effective if they are similar to this encoded information. Tulving has dubbed the process through which a retrieval cue activates a stored memory "synergistic ecphory."

Initial evidence for the encoding specificity principle came from cued recall experiments using word lists. The principle also is supported by many related experimental phenomena (e.g., the recognition failure of recallable words, state-dependent learning, transfer-appropriate processing). More recently, Tulving has argued that the appropriate retrieval cues are necessary but not sufficient to retrieve episodic memories. One also must be in a "retrieval mode" or a remembering state of mind. Empirical evidence for this theory is not as strong as that for the encoding specificity.

One implication of the encoding specificity principle is that forgetting may be caused by the lack of appropriate retrieval cues, as opposed to decay of a memory trace over time or interference from other memories. Another implication is that there is more information stored in memory relative to what can be retrieved at any given point (i.e., availability vs. accessibility).

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