Encoding specificity principle
Encyclopedia
The encoding specificity principle provides a framework for understanding how contextual information affects memory
and recall
. The principle, proposed by researchers Thompson and Tulving, states that memory is most effective when information available at encoding
is also present at retrieval. The principle explains why a subject is able to recall a target word as part of an unrelated word pair at retrieval with much more accuracy when prompted with the unrelated word than if presented with a semantically related word that was not available during encoding. In addition, people benefit 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. Specific encoding operations determine what is to be stored, which in turn verifies which retrieval cues are effective in providing access to that which was stored.
Thompson and Tulving’s initial experiment served as a quintessential model for all following studies. Almost all encoding specificity related experiments utilize the two-word pair stimuli for priming
, encoding, and retrieval. Paired words are presented to participants to prime their associations of the two words. Regardless of semantic relatedness of the paired words, participants more effectively recalled target words that had been primed when prompted for recall. Many of the following experiments employed a method modeled off of Thompson and Tulving’s. All, however, had slight variations which allowed the researchers to discover their own individual findings. The following table shows the importance of priming through word pairs to achieve enhanced recall of words encoded together.
Modeled after Table 1 Bahrick (1970)
do not always play a role in encoding specificity; memory, rather, depends upon the context at encoding and retrieval. Early research has shown that semantically related cues should be effective in retrieving a word provided the semantic cue was encoded along with the target word. If the semantically related word is not present at the time of encoding, it will not be efficient at cuing recall for the target word.
: 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.
are more accessible when the language at encoding and recall match. 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. 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.
(trying to carefully remember the visual content of the commercial) led to a much higher rate of recall for emotional advertisements. 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.
Empirical evidence regarding the nature of emotional advertising provides the advertising industry with data as to how to contour their ads to maximize recall of advertisements. Political advertising displays this emotional nature of content. A political advertisement from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign is inherently emotional in nature and therefore very easily remembered. If this advertisement were viewed and encoded in an episodic mode, due to its emotional nature, it would be easily recalled because of the mode of memory during the encoding process. This advertisement is a lasting example of emotional advertisements being easily recalled: it aired only once on September 7, 1964 yet is one of the most remembered and famous campaign advertisements to date.
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
and recall
Recall
Recall may refer to:* Recollection, recall from memory* Product recall* Recall election* Letter to recall sent to return an ambassador from a country, either as a diplomatic protest or because the diplomat is being reassigned elsewhere and is being replaced by another envoy* Recall to employment...
. The principle, proposed by researchers Thompson and Tulving, states that memory is most effective when information available at encoding
Encoding (Memory)
Memory has the ability to encode, store and recall information. Memories give an organism the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as build relationships. Encoding allows the perceived item of use or interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the...
is also present at retrieval. The principle explains why a subject is able to recall a target word as part of an unrelated word pair at retrieval with much more accuracy when prompted with the unrelated word than if presented with a semantically related word that was not available during encoding. In addition, people benefit 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. Specific encoding operations determine what is to be stored, which in turn verifies which retrieval cues are effective in providing access to that which was stored.
Basic Methods
The encoding specificity principle is generally studied through cued recall experiments using carefully constructed word lists. The stimuli are presented to participants under controlled conditions, and the participant’s memory is tested through free recall and recognition.Thompson and Tulving’s initial experiment served as a quintessential model for all following studies. Almost all encoding specificity related experiments utilize the two-word pair stimuli for priming
Priming (psychology)
Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus. It can occur following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition...
, encoding, and retrieval. Paired words are presented to participants to prime their associations of the two words. Regardless of semantic relatedness of the paired words, participants more effectively recalled target words that had been primed when prompted for recall. Many of the following experiments employed a method modeled off of Thompson and Tulving’s. All, however, had slight variations which allowed the researchers to discover their own individual findings. The following table shows the importance of priming through word pairs to achieve enhanced recall of words encoded together.
| 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) |
Modeled after Table 1 Bahrick (1970)
The Role of Semantics
SemanticsSemantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
do not always play a role in encoding specificity; memory, rather, depends upon the context at encoding and retrieval. Early research has shown that semantically related cues should be effective in retrieving a word provided the semantic cue was encoded along with the target word. If the semantically related word is not present at the time of encoding, it will not be efficient at cuing recall for the target word.
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
The location and environment in which you learn something readily affects how you can freely recall it. Lists of words were presented to participants both underwater and on the beach. When recall was tested in the environment of original encoding, free recall was far superior to recall when tested in an altered environment. Memory tested through recognition, however, was not affected. This phenomenon is explained by what is termed the outshining hypothesisContext-dependent memory
Context-dependent memory refers to improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same. One particularly common example of context-dependence at work occurs when an individual has lost an item in an unknown location...
: 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
The level and kind of noise in any given encoding environment will effect the ability for recalling the information encoded in a different auditory environment. Students receive higher scores on tests when they study for and take examinations in environments that have similar auditory background distractions, thus proving that the context-dependency effect applies to meaningful scenarios in addition to unrelated word lists. While a typical college student’s study environment often includes background noise, test environments are typically quieter. In line with the encoding specificity principle, this mismatch at encoding and retrieval is detrimental to test performance. Students who study with background noise recall just as much information as students studying in silence, provided they are tested in the same type of environment as which the information was encoded.The Voluntary Retrieval of Autobiographical Memory
Autobiographical memoriesAutobiographical memory
Autobiographical memory is a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic and semantic memory.-Formation:Conway and Pleydell-Pearce proposed that autobiographical...
are more accessible when the language at encoding and recall match. 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. 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.
The 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. 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. 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(10). Deficits in episodic memory are now widely accepted as a characteristic symptom of Alzheimer’s disease.Alcohol
Information encoded and stored while intoxicated is retrieved more effectively when later recall tests are performed while intoxicated as compared to recall while sober. 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.Advertising
The emotional nature of advertisements affects the rate of recall for the advertised product. When the nature of the advertisement was emotional, an encoding focus on episodic memoryEpisodic memory
Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events that can be explicitly stated. Semantic and episodic memory together make up the category of declarative memory, which is one of the two major divisions in memory...
(trying to carefully remember the visual content of the commercial) led to a much higher rate of recall for emotional advertisements. 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.
Empirical evidence regarding the nature of emotional advertising provides the advertising industry with data as to how to contour their ads to maximize recall of advertisements. Political advertising displays this emotional nature of content. A political advertisement from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign is inherently emotional in nature and therefore very easily remembered. If this advertisement were viewed and encoded in an episodic mode, due to its emotional nature, it would be easily recalled because of the mode of memory during the encoding process. This advertisement is a lasting example of emotional advertisements being easily recalled: it aired only once on September 7, 1964 yet is one of the most remembered and famous campaign advertisements to date.