Forgetting

10 Key excerpts on "Forgetting"

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  Psychology

  • Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould, Adrian Furnham(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  We recall events differently from the way in which they occurred or we remember things that never occurred at all. Theories of Forgetting As we have observed, some apparent losses of memory are not really instances of Forgetting at all, but rather failures of attention. If our mind is elsewhere when we are putting down our set of keys or the remote control, we simply can- not encode such acts. Correspondingly, the location of such items will not be stored in memory and available for later retrieval. At the other end of the spectrum, some material is indeed stored and available, but has weak or few retrieval cues attached to it, making it difficult for people to activate – or cue – the relevant memories from storage. Beyond these common causes of Forgetting, theorists have uncovered a number of variables that may actively interfere with memory and, in turn, produce Forgetting (Macleod et al., 2010; Wixted, 2010, 2004). Each of today’s leading expla- nations of Forgetting has received some research support, but, as you will see, each also has key limitations and raises important questions. Decay As we observed earlier, German researcher Herman Ebbinghaus pioneered the study of Forgetting over a century ago by systematically testing his own memory of lists of non- sense syllables (e.g., lin, pav, sul). After rehearsing and mas- tering a particular list, Ebbinghaus would measure how well he had retained the syllables after various intervals of time: 20 minutes, two days, a month later, and so on. He found that there was a huge drop in his memory of a list soon after learning it. However, the amount that he forgot eventually levelled off; in fact, most of the information that had been retained 10 hours after first memorizing a list remained in his memory three weeks later. Known as the Forgetting curve (Figure 10.8), this pattern of rapid memory loss followed by a stable retention of the remaining information has been supported repeatedly by research (Erdelyi, 2010).

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  Psychology in Action

  • Karen R. Huffman, Katherine Dowdell, Catherine A. Sanderson(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  • Describe Ebbinghaus’s research on learning and Forgetting. • Review the five basic theories of Forgetting. • Identify three key factors involved in Forgetting. 100 80 60 Percentage remembered Time 40 Immediate recall (100%) One hour (44%) One day (35%) One week (21%) 20 0 FIGURE 7.8 How quickly we forget Ebbinghaus’s research involved learning lists of three-letter nonsense syllables. He found that one hour after he knew a list perfectly, he remembered only 44% of the syllables. A day later, he recalled 35%, and a week later only 21%. 234 CHAPTER 7 Memory • In decay theory, memory is processed and stored in a physical form—for example, in a net- work of neurons. Connections between neurons probably deteriorate over time, leading to Forgetting. This theory explains why skills and memory often degrade if they go unused (“use it or lose it”). • According to interference theory, Forgetting is caused by two competing memories, partic- ularly memories with similar qualities. At least two types of interference exist: retroactive and proactive (Figure 7.10). When new information disrupts (interferes with) the recall of OLD, “retro” information, it is called retroactive interference (acting backward in time). Learning your new home address may cause you to forget your old home address. Con- versely, when old information disrupts (interferes with) the recall of NEW information, it is called proactive interference (acting forward in time). Old information (like the Spanish you learned in high school) may interfere with your ability to learn and remember material from your new college course in French. • Motivated Forgetting theory is based on the idea that we forget some information for a reason. According to Freudian theory (Chapter 13), people forget unpleasant or anxiety-producing Retroactive interference A memory problem that occurs when new information disrupts (interferes with) the recall of old, “retro” information; backward- acting interference.

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  Memory

  The Key to Consciousness

  • Richard F. Thompson, Stephen A. Madigan(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  When they ORDINARY Forgetting 95 were given graduation photos as retrieval cues, they were able to recall about 50 percent of the names. And when they were given a recognition test, they averaged about 80 percent correct—50 years after graduation! The Causes of Forgetting However effective various methods of prompting and cuing are, the basic fact remains that Forgetting occurs. Once upon a time you could have recalled most of your classmates’ names, and you certainly would have been able to recognize all of them. What happened as time went by? Why can you no longer do this, and why do you now need memory prompts? The ideas that memory decays as time goes by or that memory weakens with disuse have long been common answers to these questions, but there are problems with them as explanations. As the psychologist John McGeoch famously put it many years ago, “In time, iron may rust and men grow old, but the rusting and the aging are understood in terms of the chemical and other events which occur in time, not in terms of time itself.” McGeoch ac- knowledged that there were good reasons for thinking that over long periods of time, the biological basis of memory might dete- riorate. His main argument against decay as a general explanation of Forgetting was a simple and powerful one: Over a given period of time, the amount of Forgetting that occurs can be increased or decreased by varying the nature of the events that occur during that time interval , particularly in ways that interfere with memory for a given event. The process is known as retroactive interference and is a basic and very general cause of Forgetting. Interference and Forgetting Allan Baddeley demonstrated an interesting example of retroac- tive interference in everyday life events (see Table 4-3). He was able to arrange and control where people parked when making two successive visits to a clinic. The experiment went like this:

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  Essentials of Psychology

  • John P. Houston, Helen Bee, David C. Rimm(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Memory Learning and memory: intertwined processes The definition of retention Learning and retention together Measures of retention Recall Recognition Relearning Recognition versus recall The three components of memory Encoding Storage Retrieval Interference theory Retroactive inhibition Proactive inhibition Decay theory CHAPTER FIVE Information processing I: separatees tore models Sensory memory Short-term memory Long-term memory Organization in long-term memory: lexical memory How many memories? Information processing II: levels of processing Issues in memory State-dependent memory: context effects Consolidation and retrograde amnesia Summary Key terms 160 Chapter 5 Memory What do we know about memory and Forgetting? Intuitively, we are all aware that learning is a relatively difficult task, while Forgetting is painfully easy. As you study for the examinations in this course, you will probably spend many hours attempting to commit all the required information to memory. Unfortunately, you may find that your efforts will be somewhat frustrated. You are likely to forget much of the information quickly, par-ticularly after the examination. Learning requires work, while Forgetting seems effortless. The fact is that normal Forgetting is more drastic than many people suppose, as you can see by the following experiment. Suppose you memo-rize a list of nonsense syllables such as WUZ, JAT, CIS, BIL, LEM, RAK, TUR, NOP, FEX, ZEP, and GOW. You practice until you can recite them on demand. Then you cease practice, and we test your ability to recall the items over several minutes, hours, and days. What do you think will happen? Figure 1 shows the kind of result we can expect. As you will notice, the amount you remember will drop dramatically at first and then begin to level off after two or three days. This rapid drop represents a lot of Forgetting for the critter that is supposed to be tops in the animal king-dom.

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  Psychology

  Modules for Active Learning

  • Dennis Coon, John Mitterer, Tanya Martini, , Dennis Coon, John Mitterer, Tanya Martini, (Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  This difference is based on the fact that new learning can interfere with the ability to retrieve previous learning. Interference refers to the tendency for new memories to impair retrieval of older memories (and the reverse). It seems to apply to both short-term and long-term memory (Radvansky, 2017; Rodríguez-Villagra et al., 2013). (Sleep can improve memory in another way: REM sleep and dreaming appear to also help us con-solidate memories. See Module 24.) It is not completely clear whether new memories alter existing long-term memory traces or whether they make it harder to retrieve earlier memories. In any case, there is no doubt that interference is a major cause of Forgetting (Radvansky, 2017). In one classic study, college students who memorized 20 lists of words (one list each day) were able to recall only 15 percent of the last list. Students who learned only one list remembered 80 percent (Underwood, 1957) ( ➤ Figure 34.7 ). The college students who studied nonsense syllables and then slept remembered more because the type of interference called retroactive interference was held to a minimum. Retroactive interference (RET-ro-AK-tiv) refers 80 70 60 50 40 Percent remembered Sad mood during learning Happy mood during learning Mood while recalling words Sad Sad Happy Happy ➤ Figure 34.5 The effect of mood on memory. Participants best remembered a list of words when their mood during testing was the same as their mood when they learned the list. (Adapted from Bower, 1981.) Percent remembered Hours after learning 100 20 40 60 80 Awake Asleep 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ➤ Figure 34.6 The amount of Forgetting after a period of sleep or wakefulness. Notice that sleep causes less memory loss than activity that occurs while one is awake. (After Jenkins & Dallenbach, 1924.) Disuse (in memory) Proposition that memory traces weaken when memories are not periodically used or retrieved.

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  Principles of Learning and Memory

  Classic Edition

  • Robert G. Crowder(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  7 Forgetting in Short-Term Memory In this chapter we withdraw somewhat from the abstractions of primary and secondary memory in order to examine a more tangible problem for theoretical analysis: A subject who has demonstrably learned a small message can under some conditions forget it within less than a minute if he is prevented from rehearsal by a distractor task. Why? Short-term memory tasks of this sort have offered persuasive evidence for choosing from among conflicting theories of Forgetting and the data are relevant to Forgetting from both primary and secondary memory. Theories of Forgetting There are three major theoretical approaches to the loss of information in short-term memory, decay, displacement, and interference, and there is more than one way of organizing these three approaches. According to decay theory, the only function of a distractor task in the Brown–Peterson paradigm (the main situation of concern in this chapter) is to prevent the subject from thinking about the memory stimulus; the material processed in the distractor task makes no contribution of its own to Forgetting. The displacement and interference positions, however, although not belittling the facilitation that can result from rehearsal, maintain that the contents of the distractor task are crucial in producing the loss, either (1) through displacing relevant information from a fixed-capacity store or (2) by producing some type of confusion between similar traces. On this criterion the displacement and interference theories, together, oppose decay theory. In another sense, however, it is the decay and displacement approaches that are similar to one another and in conflict with the interference approach. Both the decay and displacement theories attribute Forgetting to the structural properties of the memory system, its spatial capacity (displacement) or temporal limits (decay), rather than to the information placed in the system

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  Essentials of Psychology

  Concepts and Applications

  • Jeffrey Nevid(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  These events may be too emotionally troubling—provoking too much anxiety or guilt—to be consciously experienced. A soldier may have at best a dim memory of the horror he experienced on the battlefield and remember nothing of his buddy being killed; yet his memory of other past events remains intact. Rarely is dissociative amnesia of the type that fuels many a daytime soap opera, the type in which people forget their entire lives—who they are, where they live, and so on. Concept Chart 6.2 provides an overview of the key concepts of Forgetting. BRIDGING PERSPECTIVES Concept Chart 6.2 Forgetting: Key Concepts Concept Description Example Decay theory Gradual fading of memory traces as a function of time Facts you learned in school gradually fade out of memory over time. Interference theory Disruption of memory caused by interference of previously learned material or newly learned material After sitting through your biology lecture, you forget what you learned in chemistry class the hour before. Retrieval theory Failure to access material stored in memory because of encoding failure or lack of retrieval cues You have difficulty remembering something you know is stored in memory. Motivated Forgetting Repression of anxiety-provoking material You cannot remember a traumatic childhood experience. Recall task Test of the ability to reproduce information held in memory You recite a phone number or the capitals of U.S. states or the provinces of Canada. Recognition task Test of the ability to recognize material held in memory You recognize the correct answer in a multiple-choice question. Retrograde amnesia Loss of memory of past events After suffering a blow to the head in a car accident, you are unable to remember details of the accident itself. Anterograde amnesia Loss or impairment of the ability to form or store new memories Because of a brain disorder, you find it difficult to retain new information.

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  The Processing of Memories (PLE: Memory)

  Forgetting and Retention

  • Norman E. Spear(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  may be found to depend on certain other factors: the nature of the task [e.g., free recall often yields more Forgetting than paired-associate or recognition tasks (in which more of the verbal context of learning is presented at the test)]; the content of the events being represented in memory (e.g., Forgetting may differ for words and pictures or for verbal units of differing meaningfulness); and the subject’s behavior during memory storage, which might determine “mnemonic preparation” for retrieval. But aside from the direct and indirect contributions of interference (and degree of learning) to Forgetting, the striking aspect of human Forgetting of verbal materials is its invariance. Underwood (1964, 1966a, 1972) has presented this point most effectively. Subjects who have learned a single set of paired verbal items in the laboratory context consistently forget about 20% after one day and about 50% after one week, and even factors such as individual differences in learning rate make surprisingly little difference.

  The real issues, then, center on aspects of the dependency between Forgetting and interference: the acquisition of competing memories, the circumstances of that acquisition relative to the acquisition of the critical memory, and the interaction between the critical and competing memories up to and including the point at which retrieval of the critical memory is required. These issues are most effectively considered within the context of “sources of Forgetting” generally.

  Before examining some specific sources of Forgetting, we should first consider the question in its most general sense: Assuming that dominant features of behavior have evolved because of their adaptive value, why does Forgetting occur? Sometimes a well-learned set of events, representations, or responses seems readily available “on demand.” At other times, perhaps even with the same memories, the learning seems to have been in vain; the memory cannot be retrieved and cannot be applied to contemporary behavior. Forgetting of crucial information at crucial times frequently costs its victims fortunes and even lives. One wonders how God and Darwin could have been so thoughtless as to permit this exasperating characteristic to have developed throughout the evolution of animals (and perhaps plants as well), to reach its apex with humans.

  On the other hand, Forgetting is more a blessing than a curse. We would be in a sorry state indeed if our awareness were bombarded by all the telephone numbers we had ever learned each time we used the telephone, or by the name of every person we had ever met each time we approached a friend on the street.

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  Cognition

  From Memory to Creativity

  • Robert W. Weisberg, Lauretta M. Reeves(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  recovered memories. A second possible function of Forgetting is less dramatic: It has been proposed that Forgetting serves to reduce information overload and retroactive interference (Wixted, 2004, 2005). We have already seen that directed Forgetting can reduce interference. It has also been suggested that Forgetting may play a role in the development of abstract concepts. Recall S, Luria's (1968) memory expert, who had difficulties thinking abstractly because he kept producing concrete images in response to abstract words. In Chapter 3 and earlier in this chapter, we discussed the role of Forgetting in the schematization of memory, or the development of abstract concepts.

  A final possible function for Forgetting is that it allows us to adapt most efficiently to our changing environments. That is, if the world has changed significantly since you learned some information, so the old learning is no longer relevant, then it may be most efficient to forget it. In that case, retroactive interference would allow new information to be easier to retrieve than older and now-outdated memories. A good example is computer technology: People with extensive experience with computers who only remembered how to use the original operating systems that they learned would not be in a strong position in today's world. On the other hand, if some aspect of the world has only changed a little, then old information will still be relevant (such as switching from an early version of a smart phone to an updated model). Under those circumstances, it should be more efficient to retain old and well-learned information. There is no question that this way of functioning is on the whole adaptive. What we recall in a situation will, all other things being equal, reflect our experiences in that situation. Thus, Forgetting may result in our behavior matching the long-term regularities we have encountered in the environment (Anderson & Schooler, 1991).

  Research on Forgetting: Conclusions

  We have now reviewed studies that examined Forgetting for many different types of materials, including CVCs, words, pictures, and autobiographical memories of various sorts. This research has used many different types of methods, including recognition and recall tests and physiological responses, to measure retention and Forgetting over intervals ranging from several minutes to several decades. Forgetting seems to be related to the type of material being learned, as well as to the amount and distribution of the original learning experiences with the material. Information without meaning, which can only be processed in a bottom-up manner, is forgotten faster, which is why Forgetting for CVCs has been found to be very rapid compared with that for pictures or words (e.g., Shepard, 1967 ;Standing, 1973). In addition, both overlearning and distributed practice

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  Memory

  • Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, Robert A. Bjork(Authors)
  • 1996(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  7 Retrieval Processes 199 stone, 1966; Weiner, 1966). However, by 1980, when Loftus and Loftus (1980) published a survey of psychologists interested in learning and memo- ry, most of them said they believed that retrieval failures accounted for most cases of Forgetting. Evidence presented in this chapter shows why so many psychologists came to believe that retrieval processes are critical determi- nants of recollection. The purpose of the present chapter is to review what we know about retrieval processes in human memory. In Section II we review two basic ways of studying retrieval processes: giving retrieval cues during a test, and testing people repeatedly with the same cues. In Section III we describe one general principle that has been repeatedly emphasized as governing retrieval of memories and consider two other principles that seem to apply. We argue that understanding this small set of principles can provide considerable power in analyzing retrieval processes. In Section IV we introduce the encoding/retrieval paradigm (Tulving, 1983) and argue that it represents a fundamentally important method of studying retrieval processes and their interaction with encoding processes. In Sections IV-VI we (1) review how the encoding/retrieval paradigm has been applied to understand various phenomena; (2) discuss the effects of prior retrieval on later retrieval; and (3) briefly describe some related topics. Finally, we summarize the chapter's main points. II. METHODS OF STUDYING RETRIEVAL Psychologists interested in learning and memory have developed several distinct methods of studying retrieval. Indeed, in some sense, all methods of testing memory study retrieval, because a retrieval phase is involved in every memory test. However, we can single out some methods for special attention, given here or elsewhere in this volume.

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