Transcript Forgetting - Cloudfront.net

AP Psychology
Retrieval and Forgetting
Forgetting
An inability to retrieve information due to
poor encoding, storage, or retrieval.
• Biological Reasons
• Experience Factors
Biological Factors
• Damage to the Hippocampus
– Difficulty forming new memories
– Diminished in Alzheimer’s patients
• Neurotransmitters play a role
– Acetylcholine
– Alzheimer’s patients show low levels of this
• Decay theory
– Memories deteriorate because of the passage of time
– Distractor Studies – information fades from STM
Decay Theory
Poor durability of stored memories leads to
their decay. Ebbinghaus showed this with
his forgetting curve.
Retaining Spanish
Bahrick (1984) showed a similar pattern of
forgetting and retaining over 50 years.
Andrew Holbrooke/ Corbis
Biology Continued - Amnesia
• Memory loss caused by accidents, surgery,
poor diet, or disease
• Retrograde amnesia
– Loss of memory from prior to an accident or
injury
– Like a computer crashing without saving your
essay.
Retrieval Failure
Although the information is retained in the
memory store, it cannot be accessed.
Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) is a retrieval failure
phenomenon. Given a cue (What makes blood cells
red?) the subject says the word begins with an H
(hemoglobin).
Experiences can affect Memory
• Interference
• Retroactive interference
– Occurs when new information interferes with
information already in memory
– The ‘retro’ old info is interfered with by the
new
Retroactive Interference
Sleep prevents retroactive interference. Therefore, it
leads to better recall.
Interference
• Proactive interference
– Occurs when information already in memory interferes
with new information
– Because of proactive interference, new learning is
disrupted by old habits.
– Psychologists have found that recall of later items
can be improved by making them distinctive from
early items. For example, people being fed groups
of numbers to remember did much better when
they were suddenly fed a group of words instead.
This is called release from proactive interference
Interference
Learning some new information may disrupt
retrieval of other information.
I need a volunteer that knows
their colors.
• Don’t read the words, just say the colors
they’re printed in and as fast as you can
Red
Yellow
Green
Blue
Red
Blue
Yellow
Green
Blue
Red
Interference
• When you look at the words you see both
its color and meaning.
• When they are in conflict you must make
a choice
• Experience has taught you that word
meaning is more important than color so
you retrieve that information.
• You are not always in complete control of
what you pay attention to.
Interference
Experience and Forgetting
• Situational factors
– Recall of information is better if environment is the
same as when information was learned
• State-dependent memory
– Recall of information is better if person is in the same
physiological state as when information was learned
• Reconstruction
– Memories can be altered with each retrieval
– We do this to keep the schemata of our self and our
environment
Context Effects
Scuba divers recall more words underwater if they
learned the list underwater, while they recall more
words on land if they learned that list on land
(Godden & Baddeley, 1975).
Fred McConnaughey/ Photo Researchers
How to Reduce Forgetting
• Develop motivation
• Practice memory skills
• Be confident in your
ability to remember
• Minimize distractions
• Stay focused
• Make meaningful
connections to what is in
long-term memory
• Use mental imagery
• Use retrieval cues
• Rely on more than
memory alone
• Be aware of possible
distortion due to schemata
Some “forgetting” isn’t
a retrieval problem at all.
Encoding Failure
We cannot remember what we do not
encode.
Which penny is real?
Motivated Forgetting
Motivated Forgetting:
People unknowingly
revise their memories.
Culver Pictures
Repression: A defense
mechanism that banishes
anxiety-arousing
thoughts, feelings, and
memories from
consciousness.
Sigmund Freud
Why do we forget?
Forgetting can occur at
any memory stage. We
filter, alter, or lose
much information
during these stages.