Talk:Encoding specificity principle

Untitled
Currently, the Wikipedia encoding specificity principle page does not adequately address the intricacies of the topic. We will add many subsections to the page, including basic methods, specific results, and theory, to improve the article's clarity. We will also include references to the Thompson and Tulving experiment, the first investigation to demonstrate the encoding specificity principle; many other successive studies were based off of this experiement. Currently, the Wikipedia page has no citations. We plan on citing several different experiments to further explain the principle. Examples of how the encoding specificity principle applies to every-day life will make it desirable to many audiences. Furthermore, we plan on contextualizing other areas of memory study - including availability and accessibility - to increase the article's detail. From initial research, we have deduced the encoding specificity principle is connected to semantics, an area we plan to expand upon.

DrewBlundell (talk) 14:37, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 September 2019 and 18 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Haleyricks.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:42, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Introduction confusion
At first glance, these two sentences in the introduction appear to contradict each other: "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."

The first sentence seems to say that people benefit more from a weakly related cue. The second sentence says that people benefit equally well from a weakly or strongly related cue. I'm guessing that the early, and thus fundamental, papers in this area did not directly contradict each other. My point is simply that these sentences should be re-written to better represent their underlying research as, at the moment, they may be confusing to some: 1) Are unrelated/weak and semantically related/strong the same thing? 2) In the second sentence, was the strongly related cue present during encoding? etc... A.real.human.being (talk) 18:22, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, example sentence to fix it: Memory researchers such as Thomson and Tulving state that recall of memory is most effective when the context of encoding matches that of the retrieval. This "context" can be anything from the six senses to environmental cues. Then this sentence should be omitted and another example should be given: "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." — Preceding unsigned comment added by RomainDecrop (talk • contribs) 20:21, 2 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The existing introductory paragraph is unnecessarily confusing. I agree with the above clarification, but suggest the following:

Memory researchers Thomson and Tulving suggest that recall from memory is most effective when the context at the time of encoding matches the context at the time of retrieval. This "context" can refer to physical location or surrounding, as well as mental state or mood of the individual. The context during (storage) determines what retrieval cues will be effective during retrieval.

I think that in the first sentence, instead of saying "context" right away we should use "conditions", because both context-dependent memory and state-dependent memory stem from this principle. Using context right away in the first sentence takes away from our ability to introduce the two later on. Stephanie Parrado (talk) 14:32, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the above correction for the second sentence, but think there should still be a mention of weak vs. strong cues. KieraMolloy18 (talk) 07:06, 9 March 2016 (UTC)Kiera Molloy

I also agree that there should be mention of weak and strong cues and kept them in there Stephanie Parrado (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I think also having "mental state or mood" is a good addition to the paragraph. Adaaka (talk) 14:54, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I went ahead and added a link to state-dependent memory at the end. Stephanie Parrado (talk) 19:30, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the above suggestions. However, do you think that matching is the best word to use in the definition? I think that 'interaction' or 'relationship' between encoding context and retrieval context might be better wording. Just a suggestion. HalimahMohammed (talk) 03:05, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Halimah, I think match is the right word to use. We talked in class (Prof. Marsh) about how "it's all about the match". Stephanie Parrado (talk) 19:34, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Encoding Specificity Team: Be sure to include "meaning" another condition that can match or mismatch. For example, if I encode the word "bug" thinking of an insect I may not retrieve it later when prompted with spy-B__ since the meaning is different. Elizareader (talk) 15:00, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Encoding Specificity Team: Please reconsider the following text, because classrooms are so similar that you normally don't get an effect. Similarly, the data on intoxication was about errors, not correct responses. "Consider the debate on whether taking an exam in the same classroom in which the material for the exam was encoded positively correlates with performance on said exam. The encoding specificity principle suggests that it does. In this example, the context refers to the physical location in which the exam takes place. Another example could correspond to the state an individual is in at the time of encoding; studies show that a person who is intoxicated at the time of encoding has a better time retrieving information if later the person is also intoxicated" Elizareader (talk) 15:00, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

^ Should I just delete the short paragraph or reword it to emphasize that effects are rather small? Stephanie Parrado (talk) 16:53, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

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Two quick questions
Does the encoding specificity principle only apply to episodic memory or would it work for semantic memory as well? Also, the article mentions that this principle is important in both context-dependent and state-dependent memory. Would it be helpful for the article to discuss why encoding specificity matters to those topics? Christopherson94 (talk) 18:36, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Davidson College supported by WikiProject Psychology and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

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