A classic illustration of encoding failure is the common inability to accurately recall the details on the front of a U.S. penny, despite frequent exposure to it. A study by researchers Raymond Nickerson and Marilyn Adams (1979) demonstrated that most people cannot identify a correct penny from a set of options. This occurs because individuals typically only encode the minimal information needed to distinguish a penny from other coins, rather than its specific features, preventing the details from being stored in long-term memory.