In the Shadow of Memory
Peggy Munson in Stricken, 2014
One of the strangest aspects of living with certain kinds of memory loss is knowing that the forgetting is happening. I know I am not going to remember things that I desperately want to remember and have only limited success in using special encoding techniques to hold on to what matters. Memories of the last visits with my brother in San Jose, for instance, where he is dying from complications of diabetes. We visit him every three months as his condition worsens—he is now on dialysis four days a week, blind, nearly immobile, not always alert—and each visit feels like it could be the last. We sit together in his living room and talk, but by the time I return to my room and take notes it is too late. I long to hoard what we say, how he looks, the things we are able finally to communicate. But no matter how hard I try to focus, to encode and keep safe these memories that are so packed with meaning for me, the results are mixed at best, and what remains is usually what Beverly recalls for me.
Memory
Mohamed Ahmed Abd El-Hay in Understanding Psychology for Medicine and Nursing, 2019
If new information is not rapidly encoded, or rehearsed, it is forgotten. If it is transferred to long-term memory, it becomes relatively permanent, although retrieving it may be a problem. Forgetting may result for different reasons, such as encoding failure, consolidation failure, storage decay, or retrieval failure.Encoding failure: failure to encode information leads to the inability to put materials into long-term memory. Age-related memory decline could be explained by the effects of age on encoding efficiency.Consolidation failure: disruption to the consolidation process prevents a permanent memory formation, e.g., in cases of head trauma with retrograde amnesia, loss of memory affects experiences that occurred shortly before a loss of consciousness which were not consolidated.Storage decay: memory traces that are not used disappear with the passage of time.Retrieval failure: forgetting may result from retrieval failure. It may be caused by a lack of retrieval cues, proactive or retroactive interference, or it may be motivated forgetting. Motivated forgetting refers to states, in which information is forgotten through suppression or repression in order to protect oneself from painful materials that produce anxiety or guilt.
Memory
Andrea Utley in Motor Control, Learning and Development, 2018
Any theory of memory must explain why information is forgotten over time. There are two main hypotheses as to why we forget; these are that we lose information due to decay or interference. Decay refers to the loss of memory simply due to the passage of time. Interference refers to the situation in which new information may displace or corrupt older information. Table 10.1 provides an overview of types of forgetting. Decay theory (spontaneous decay) assumes that when something is learned, a memory trace is formed that decays spontaneously.Interference theory (interference) views forgetting as being due to competing responses between the criterion tasks and tasks that have been learned before or after the criterion tasks.There are two different types of interference. When new information pushes old items out of memory this is called retroactive interference; this type of interference works backward (retro), ruining memory for items entered earlier. For example, changing your telephone number may cause you to forget your old number. This is known as retroactive interference. However, there may also be times when older information ‘resurfaces’ and becomes confused with newer information. For example, you may suddenly recall an old telephone number and confuse it with your new one. This is known as proactive inhibition. Old items clogging up the STM prevent the accurate entry of new information through proactive interference; this type of interference works forward (‘pro’), straining memory for items entered later.
Systems consolidation and fear memory generalisation as a potential target for trauma-related disorders
Published in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, 2022
Lizeth K. Pedraza, Rodrigo O. Sierra, Lucas de Oliveira Alvares
Forgetting is a feature of how our brain works, allowing us to remove unnecessary information. It is thought that forgetting allows animals to express flexible behaviours, responding properly to the environment (Richards and Frankland 2017). Similarly, generalisation extends previously acquired knowledge to novel (but related) learning experiences. Interestingly, it has been suggested the generalisation of contextual fear memories reflects the forgetting of the detailed characteristics or attributes of stimuli involved in the initial learning (Riccio et al. 1992). This assumption is also based on hippocampal involvement during retrieval; that is, the hippocampus becomes less responsible to stimulus attributes during retrieval when the interval between training and testing increases (Jasnow et al. 2012). Migues et al. (2016) showed that contextual fear generalisation can be prevented by blocking mechanisms responsible for memory forgetting. In the last decade, some of the neurobiological basis of memory forgetting have been described (for a review, please see De Oliveira Alvares and Do-Monte 2021), allowing the modulation of this process in order to prevent memory generalisation.
Responsible Remembering and Forgetting in Younger and Older Adults
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2022
Dillon H. Murphy, Alan D. Castel
While the present work suggests that responsible forgetting can potentially aid memory for important information, we did not directly test if there was a trade-off between forgetting and enhanced memory. There may be benefits to forgetting irrelevant information (such as preventing interference), and this could be more directly tested in a paradigm in which there are consequences, or trade-offs, between memory for important information and remembering information that was marked for forgetting. As such, the present work does not unambiguously show that participants carried out willful forgetting (compared to selective encoding) that benefits overall memory performance. It may be that selective encoding plays more of a role than an active forgetting process, and also that the two processes are inter-related. For example, for older adults, there may be less concern about the remembering of lower value information, and this could ensure that more attention is directed to prioritize the recall of important, goal-relevant information. Thus, while the present work suggests that responsible forgetting could help memory efficiency, future research is needed to determine if there are clear benefits of forgetting certain outdated or unnecessary information that can then directly influence, and possibly enhance, the ability to selectively focus on important information.
How teachers can help learners build storage and retrieval strength
Published in Medical Teacher, 2018
Janeve Desy, Kevin Busche, Ronald Cusano, Pamela Veale, Sylvain Coderre, Kevin McLaughlin
Our approach of considering storage and retrieval strength separately could, justifiably, be criticized since these are interdependent entities: storage strength attenuates the loss of retrieval strength over time and the retrieval-enhancing strategies that we describe below also enhance storage strength (Bjork and Bjork 1992). However, our rationale for considering retrieval strength separately is that when information is effectively stored in long-term memory there should be sufficient storage strength – implying that forgetting is primarily due to stored information being inaccessible due to insufficient retrieval strength. This situation, where there is high storage strength and low retrieval strength, can explain why we are able to recognize information while being unable to recall details and why relearning information is easier than the initial learning (Hofer et al. 2009). Thus, since low retrieval strength is an independent and frequent explanation for failure to produce “…an enduring change in behavior…”, we feel that teachers should also target retrieval strength during their learning experiences.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Forgetting Curve
- Memory
- Repression
- Sensory Memory
- Thought Suppression
- Long-Term Memory
- Atkinson–Shiffrin Memory Model
- Short-Term Memory
- Motivated Forgetting
- Recall