Forgetting

1. Um I forget….. Forgetting

2. How do we forget? • Herman Ebbinghaus, 1885 • subjects memorise a list of meaningless, three letter words called nonsense syllables • tracked how quickly his subjects forgot the words • became known as the Ebbinghaus or Forgetting Curve

3. The forgetting curve Measures the amount of information retained and the rate at which information is forgotten.

4. The forgetting curve

5. Measures of Retention – Measuring MemoryRecall • Being asked to reproduce information with the fewest possible cues. • Free Recall – asked to remember as much information as possible in no particular order • Serial Recall – asked to recall information in a particular order • Cued Recall- given a cue then asked to recall

6. Measures of Retention – Measuring MemoryRecognition • Identifying correct information from among alternatives. • Learning information again that has been previously learned and stored in long-term memory. • Savings score calculated: The amount of information saved from previous learning Measures of Retention – Measuring Memory Relearning

7. Measures of retention - sensitivity • Recall worst • Recognition better • Relearning best

8. Theories of forgetting Psychologists have developed a number of theories to explain why we forget. Theories of forgetting Retrieval failure Interference theory Motivated forgetting Decay theory Memory fades (decays) over time due to disuse. We lack, or fail to use, the right cues to retrieve information stored in memory. Other competing memories interfere with retrieval of what we are trying to recall. There is a strong desire (motive) to forget.

9. Forgetting • The inability to retrieve previously stored information. If you forget that doesn’t mean that the information is gone forever, it simply means that for whatever reason you have failed to retrieve that information. • Retrieval Failure Theory: Forget because fail to use the right retrieval cue • Tip of the tongue phenomenon: Know that you know the answer but can’t retrieve if from memory at that point in time. • Possibly due to partial retrieval. Lack of correct cue.

10. Motivated forgetting • Forget because we want to forget, defense mechanism that protects us from distressing memories. • Information not lost but hard to retrieve during normal waking consciousness • Motivation can also lead us to recode distressing memories as more pleasant • Repression - unconscious defense mechanism • Suppression – consciously choosing not to think

11. Interference theory • Forget because other memories interfere with the one we are trying to retrieve, particularly those that are similar to the one we are trying to recall • Retroactive interference– New information interferes with the remembering of old information • Proactive interference- Old information interferes with ability to remember new information

12. Retroactive Interference New Learning Interferes with Old Learning Italian Learning Spanish Test on Italian TIME

13. Proactive Interference Old Material Interferes with New Learning Spanish Learning Italian Test on Italian TIME

14. Decay theory • Forget because memory fades over time due to misuse • Based on assumption that memory is stored as a physical or chemical trace in the brain