OUTLINE AND EVALUATE TWO EXPLANATIONS OF FORGETTING
It can be said that while we were studying the capacity of long term memory and short term memory we over looked forgetting. The reason for memory missing has been tried to solve by many psychologists with different experiments. I can also say that from the studies it shows that memories are not lost due to capacity of the stores, but because it has been forgotten.
There are three different types of forgetting in the short term memory which are trace decay, interference and diversion of attention. I will be talking about trace decay and showing experiments to support the theory. In the study by Peterson and Peterson it was found that recall dropped from 80% after 3 second recall to fewer than 20% when the retention interval was 18 seconds. They believe the cause of this drop was due to one possibility which is that the memory trace simply disappears if it is not rehearsed. In the brown Peterson technique, participants were required to count backwards in threes to prevent rehearsal. This is called trace decay theory and is based on the idea that memories have a physical basis (a ‘trace’) and that this will decay in time unless the trace is passed to long term memory. The trace disappears just like a photographic image that is not fixed with chemicals. Information in short term memory certainly does disappear but it may not be because of spontaneous decay but it may be the result of interference.
