Suppose you study 100 items 99 are words, and one is a picture-of a penguin, item 50 in the list. One caution with this principle, though, is that, for the cue to work, it can’t match too many other experiences (Nairne, 2002 Watkins, 1975). This is why it’s good to study for midterms and finals in the same room you’ll be taking them in. In this instance, the physical context itself provided cues for retrieval. As a result of encoding specificity, the students who took the test in the same place they learned the words were actually able to recall more words (Godden & Baddeley, 1975) than the students who took the test in a new setting. Later, the participants were tested on the word sets, either in the same location they learned the words or a different one. A classic experiment on the encoding specificity principle had participants memorize a set of words in a unique setting. In general, the encoding specificity principle states that, to the extent a retrieval cue (the song) matches or overlaps the memory trace of an experience (the party, the conversation), it will be effective in evoking the memory. Years later, even though you haven’t thought about that party in ages, when you hear the song on the radio, the whole experience rushes back to you. Thus, the song became part of that whole complex experience. For example, take the song on the radio: perhaps you heard it while you were at a terrific party, having a great, philosophical conversation with a friend. The general principle that underlies the effectiveness of retrieval cues is the encoding specificity principle (Tulving & Thomson, 1973): when people encode information, they do so in specific ways. Nevertheless, the song is closely associated with that time, so it brings the experience to mind.

You may hear a song on the radio that suddenly evokes memories of an earlier time in your life, even if you were not trying to remember it when the song came on. What factors determine what information can be retrieved from memory? One critical factor is the type of hints, or cues, in the environment.

Something that cannot be retrieved now and which is seemingly gone from memory may, with different cues applied, reemerge. We can’t know the entirety of what is in our memory, but only that portion we can actually retrieve.

Encoding specificity principle examples