During the lecture wayne is busy texting on his cell phone, while kind of half paying attention to what the professor is saying. a few minutes after making a point the professor gives a pop quiz on the material. wayne can't retrieve the information the prof gave in the lecture and does poorly on the test. a likely factor in wayne's not being able to retrieve the information is

A likely factor in Wayne's not being able to retrieve the information is encoding failure.

Encoding in general refers to the ability of the brain to store and retrieve data or memories.
Encoding Failure is a term used to describe the occasional failure of the brain to create a memory link.
When this encoding failure occurs, the brain is prevented from its ability of storing or retrieving any data.