''how can the research on forgetting help us to understand remembering''

Psychology ‘‘how can the research on forgetting help us to understand remembering’’

The actual term forgetting is the inability to recall or recognize information. Forgetting may occur because the information no longer exists in memory and so is not available for retrieval. Alternatively it can occur because it cannot be found and so is not accessible (cue dependent forgetting). Forgetting is more likely with information that needs to be recalled, as recognition is usually easier than recall.

Explanations for forgetting are different for short term memory and long-term memory.

Since STM are likely to be due to lack of availability it has disappeared, rather than accessibility (being able to find it).

Trace decay is involved in the many reasons that we forget. This is the actual physical disappearance of a memory trace from the brain. Trace decay is one reason for forgetting. It should be distinguished from cue-dependent forgetting, in which the memory trace has not decayed but is hard to find. Peterson and Peterson provided evidence that data in STM disappears.

Peterson and Petersons study was to test the hypothesis that information held in STM disappears within about 20 seconds if rehearsal is prevented. If participants are allowed to repeat information, this maintains information indefinitely. An accurate reading of STM requires no rehearsal. Participants were given trigrams to remember such as TVG. After each trigram they were given a three-digit number and asked to count backwards in 3s and 4s. This was to prevent rehearsal. Each trial they stopped at different times: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18. This is called the ‘Brown-Peterson technique’ the findings of their experiment were that if participants had to wait 3 seconds before recalling the trigram they could recall the trigram correctly 80% of the time; if they had to wait 6 seconds, 50% were recalled; and after 18 seconds, recall was down to 2%.

This suggests that STM is limited to a maximum of 18 seconds when rehearsal is prevented. This supports the idea that STM and LTM are very different types of memory as STM has a limited duration.

Displacement involves forgetting, and so helps us to understand remembering. Displacement is the pushing out of information from short term memory by new information before it has been processed long enough to pass onto long term memory. Information stored in STM is displaced by new information entering STM as it has a limited capacity. This may help to explain Peterson and Paterson’s ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

This suggests that STM is limited to a maximum of 18 seconds when rehearsal is prevented. This supports the idea that STM and LTM are very different types of memory as STM has a limited duration.

There are emotional factors involved in forgetting, and in order to understand remembering these must be identified to.

A repressed memory inhibits recall. It is an example of lack of accessibility, or restricted access due to emotion. Repression is when memories causing great anxiety are kept out of conscious awareness in order to protect the individual. So repression is a good example of motivated forgetting.

Flash bulb memories are extremely important in the way they cause us to remember something. Flash bulb memories are long lasting and vivid memories of a specific event. The event is important emotionally. The term ‘flashbulb’ refers to the fact that it has been encoded, as the memory is so detailed and accurate. An example of this is the death if Princess Diana.

Forgetting in long term memory can be explained as the lack of availability or accessibility. We need to look into the failures of availability in LTM to help understand remembering in LTM.

Encoding failure may be a reason why you may not recall the information wanted. Encoding failure means that the memory is not available because you never remembered it! You may think you’ve forgotten something, when in fact you had never stored it.

Trace decay is unlikely to apply to long term memory like it does with short term memory. Some kinds of memory clearly do not decay e.g. you never forget how to ride a bicycle even if you haven’t done it for a long time this is called procedural memory. Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) created a study where they asked two students to recall nonsense syllables at intervals between one and eight hours. The students were either awake or asleep during the retention interval. There was much less forgetting when the students were asleep than when they were awake. If trace decay theory was correct we would expect the same amount of forgetting whether they were asleep or awake. The fact that they forgot more when they were awake suggests that that interference from other activities were responsible for the increased forgetting, rather than decay. The fact that some forgetting took place when the participants were asleep could be explained in terms of interference from dreams, or perhaps there may indeed have been some trace decay. So in this research into forgetting tells us interference could be involved in forgetting.

Interference is when one set of information competes with another, causing it to be ‘overwritten’ or physically lost. There are two types of interference:

retroactive (RI)- a second set of information ‘pushes out’ earlier material
Proactive (PI) - previous learning interferes with current learning/recall.

Interference has limited application. It is relevant to occasions when two sets of data are very similar, so we do need to take it into consideration when looking at forgetting and remembering. Although it is rare in everyday life but it does occur.

Cue dependent forgetting is a classic example of forgetting when looking at forgetting in long term memory. This is a classic example of forgetting because retrieval failure. The information is stored in memory and so available but it just cannot be retrieved until an appropriate cue is given. This is important as it shows we sought of remember the information that is stored by a cue, rather than to completely forget it. There has been research into this to help us understand. Evidence of the importance of cue dependent forgetting was provided in the study by Tulving and Psotka (1971). The relatively better performance with cued recall occurs because the participants were better able to retrieve their memory.

So all these factors explained about forgetting help us to understand, if and how we remember information.