Even mental states, such as your mood, can be cues feeling happy, sad, or nervous might remind you of other times you felt the same way. The noises around you can also act as memory cues. Other studies have shown that matching the acoustic environment you studied in can also help test performance. Moreover, this principle isn’t limited to just physical location. And that’s the basic insight of the encoding specificity principle. The environment itself helps us to remember. So when you have these same cues available during the test, there are more ways to recall those memories. This happens because the brain is taking in - or encoding - all of the information around you as potential cues for memory while you are studying. Those who studied on land remembered the words better when they were tested on land, but the ones who studied them underwater actually did better when tested underwater. The divers were asked to remember lists of words while either underwater or on land. The psychologist Alan Baddeley demonstrated this principle in a test of scuba divers. So, for example, if you study for a test in a specific room, you will perform better on that test if you take it in the same room. It states that it’s easier to recall information when you are in the same context in which you memorized or studied it. The encoding specificity principle shows that memories are linked to the context in which they are created.

The more cues you have available, the easier it is to remember something. When it’s time to recall that memory, having those cues can give your mind a toehold, a little tip to direct you to the rest of the memory. Memory is rarely perfect, and is highly dependent on contextual cues or memory tips. There’s something about being in the kitchen that jogs my memory. When I’m at the store, however, it never crosses my mind to pick up the ketchup - until I walk into the kitchen and realize we’re still out of it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in the kitchen and realized I’m out of ketchup and then tell myself to pick it up the next time I’m at the store.

Specificity principle