Transcript Forgetting - Fall Creek High School

FORGETTING
When Memory
Fails
THEORIES
 Decay Theory - Ebbinghaus
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“Memory fades over time.”
The more often you revisit information, the better you will remember
Examples?
What does this theory leave out?
 Interference Theory
 “Learning more = Remembering Less”
 Routine/Common events compete for memory space
 Examples?
 Retroactive: New information interferes with remembering old
information
 Proactive: Old information interferes with remembering new
*Which of these have you experienced with school?
THEORIES
 Retrieval Theory
 Encoding Failure: information never gets encoded into our brains
 Small details
 Information encountered but never used
 Lack of Retrieval: trouble accessing information, even though we
know it
 “Tip of the Tongue” Phenomenon: the information is at the edge of your
grasp but unable to be fully accessed
 ie: “I know her name starts with a B….”
 Repression – Freud
 “Motivated forgetting”
 Psychological defense mechanism
 Protects us from awareness of traumatic or stressful information
 These memories do not disappear; they remain in the mind, just hidden
 Recovering these memories? Reliable? Would you?
 How common?
AMNESIA
 Retrograde
 Loss of memory of pasts events
 More recent events typically lost, rather than entire memory or old events
 Anterograde
 Inability or difficulty storing new memories
 Childhood Amnesia
 Normal for everyone
 Few memories prior to age 3 ½
 Language development, organization of memories
 Brain development for lasting memories
 Causes
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Blows to the head
Degenerative brain disease (Alzheimer’s)
Blockage of blood vessels to brain
Infectious diseases
Chronic alcoholism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcL24s-S6ns
HOMEWORK FOR TUESDAY
 Write down in as much detail as you can a specific memory
you have
 Who, what, when, where, why, how
 Emotions, sensory observations (touch, taste, smell, sound, sight)
 For Tuesday: have someone else who was there right down
their version of the events
 Tuesday: reflection process, comparing the two accounts of
the event