1. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory
Module 24
Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory
Josef F. Steufer/Getty Images

2. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Forgetting and the Two-Track Mind
24-1: WHY DO WE FORGET?
William James (1890): “If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.” It’s surely a blessing that most of us discard the clutter of useless or out-of-date information. But our sometimes unpredictable memory can be frustrating.
Anterograde amnesia: An inability to form new memories.
Retrograde amnesia: An inability to retrieve information from one’s past.

3. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Encoding Failure
Much of what we sense we never notice, and what we fail to encode, we will never remember.
Age: Encoding lag is linked to age-related memory decline
Attention: Failure to notice or encode contributes to memory failure
Consider: You have surely seen the Apple computer logo thousands of times. Can you draw it? In one study, only 1 of 85 UCLA students (including 52 Apple users) could do so accurately (Blake et al., 2015). Without encoding effort, many potential memories never form.

4. Forgetting as Encoding Failure
We cannot remember what we have not encoded.

5. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Storage Decay
Even after encoding something well, we sometimes later forget it.
Course of forgetting is initially rapid, and then levels off with time
Physical changes in the brain occur as memory forms (memory trace).

6. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting
Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve
After learning lists of nonsense syllables, such as YOX and JIH, Ebbinghaus studied how much he retained up to 30 days later. He found that memory for novel information fades quickly, then levels out. (Data from Ebbinghaus, 1885.)

7. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting
Retrieval Failure
Sometimes even stored information cannot be accessed, which leads to forgetting.

8. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Retrieval Failure
Interference
Proactive (forward-acting) interference: Occurs when prior learning disrupts recall of new information.
Retroactive (backward-acting) interference: Occurs when new learning disrupts recall of older information.
Motivated Forgetting
Sigmund Freud argued that we repress painful or unacceptable memories to protect our self-concept and to minimize anxiety.
Today’s researchers think repression rarely, if ever, occurs. Forgetting is more likely when information is neutral, not emotional; we often have intrusive memories of the very same traumatic experiences we would most like to forget.
Repression: In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

9. When do we forget? Forgetting can occur at any memory stage.
As we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it.

10. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors
24-2: HOW DO MISINFORMATION, IMAGINATION, AND SOURCE AMNESIA INFLUENCE OUR MEMORY CONSTRUCTION? HOW DO WE DECIDE WHETHER A MEMORY IS REAL OR FALSE?
Memory is not precise. We don’t just retrieve memories, we reweave them.
Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham (1994): “Our memories are flexible and superimposable, a panoramic blackboard with an endless supply of chalk and erasers.”
Reconsolidation: A process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again.

11. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors Misinformation and Imagination Effects
Misinformation effect: When a memory has been corrupted by misleading information.
Even repeatedly imagining fake actions and events can create false memories.
Digitally altered photos can produce imagination inflation, memories of events that people have not in fact experienced.

12. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors
In this experiment, people viewed a film clip of a car accident (left). Those who later were asked a leading question recalled a more serious accident than they had witnessed (Loftus and Palmer, 1974).

13. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors
Source amnesia (also called source misattribution): attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about , read about, or imagined.
Source misattribution, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories.
Déjà vu: That eerie sense that “I’ve experienced this before.” Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

14. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors Discerning True and False Memories
False memories feel like real memories and can be persistent but are usually limited to the gist of the event
False memories are often a result of faulty eyewitness testimony
Memory construction helps explain
Why dating partners who have fallen in love have overestimated their first impressions of each other
Why people asked how they felt 10 years ago about certain social issues recall attitudes closer to their current views than to the views they actually reported a decade earlier

15. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors Children’s Eyewitness Recall
24-3: HOW RELIABLE ARE YOUNG CHILDREN’S EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTIONS?
Ceci and Bruck (1993, 1995) have studied extensively:
The effect of suggestive interviewing techniques
How easily children’s memories can be molded; in one study, 58 percent of preschoolers produced false stories about one or more unexperienced events.
Children can often accurately recall events, when nonleading questions are asked by a neutral person, in words the children can understand, and asked soon after the event (ideally before children have talked much to involved adults).

16. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse?
24-4: WHY ARE REPORTS OF REPRESSED AND RECOVERED MEMORIES SO HOTLY DEBATED?
The debate between memory researchers and some well-meaning therapists focuses on whether most memories of early childhood abuse are repressed and can be recovered during therapy using “memory work” techniques that may involve “guided imagery,” leading questions, hypnosis, or dream analysis.
Two tragedies of child abuse: One, when people don’t believe abuse survivors. Two, when innocent people are falsely accused. There’s a need to find a sensible common ground.

17. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse?
Those committed to protecting abused children and those committed to protecting wrongly accused adults have agreed on the following:
Sexual abuse happens.
Injustice happens.
Forgetting happens.
Recovered memories are commonplace, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the unconscious mind repressed them .
Memories of things happening before age 3 are unreliable.
Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable.
Memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting.

18. Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory Forgetting: Memory Construction Errors Improving Memory
24-5: HOW CAN YOU USE MEMORY RESEARCH FINDINGS TO DO BETTER IN THIS AND OTHER COURSES?
Rehearse repeatedly
Make the material meaningful
Activate retrieval cues
Use mnemonic devices
Minimize interference
Sleep more
Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and to find out what you do not yet know
SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Retrieve, Review) study technique used in this book incorporates several learning strategies.