Why We Forget

1. Why We Forget

2. DECAY • Memory traces fade with time if they are not accessed now and then • Occurs in sensory and short-term memory unless we rehearse (elaborative rehearsal/maintenance rehearsal) • Maintenance: constant repeating of information • Elaborative: applying meaning to information in order to be remembered • Does not account for long-term memory • Ex. Swimming – you can not swim for 20 years and still remember how (motor skills are procedural memories) • Ex. School – research study showed those who took Spanish in high school could pass a Spanish test taken 25 years later

3. REPLACEMENT • New information entering can wipe out old information • Information is “erased” and replaced by misleading information Ex.

4. INTERFERENCE • Occurs because similar items of info interfere or compete with one another in storage and retrieval • May get there but gets confused • Associated with short-term and long-term memory • Retroactive: Forgetting that occurs when recently learned material interferes with the ability to remember similar material stored previously • Ex. At a party and you meet a girl names Julie, a little later you meet someone names Judy. You go on to talk to other people, and after an hour, you again bump into Julie, but by mistake you call her Judy. • Proactive: forgetting that occurs when previously stored material interferes with the ability to remember similar, more recently learned material • Ex. Spanish you learned in high school may interfere with the ability to remember new information such as French you are trying to learn now

5. CUE-DEPENDENT • Rely on retrieval cues • If you are trying to remember the last name of an actor, it might help to know the person’s first name or the name of the movie. • State-dependent memory • The tendency to remember something when the rememberer is in the same physical or mental state as during the original learning or experience • Ex. If intoxicated you may remember it better when you once again have had a few drinks that when you are sober (this is not an endorsement of drunkenness! Your memory is best if sober during encoding and recall)

6. REPRESSION • Psychogenic amnesia – partial or complete loss of memory for threatening/traumatic experiences (Ex. PTSD) • Need to escape intolerable feelings • Repression: • Freud argued that the mind defends itself from unwelcome and upsetting memories • In psyoanalytic theory, the selective, involuntary pushing of threatening or upsetting info into the unconscious