Forgetting

1
Forgetting Memory Construction
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Storage Loss Amnesia

• Amnesia refers to the loss of memory.
• Amnesiac patients typically have losses in
  explicit memory.

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Types of Amnesia

• Anterograde Amnesia type of memory loss where
  patients are UNABLE TO FORM ANY NEW MEMORIES.
  Cant remember anything that has occurred AFTER a
  traumatic head injury.
• Retrograde Amnesia type of memory loss where
  patients are UNABLE TO REMEMBER PAST EVENTS. May
  forget everything that happened BEFORE a
  traumatic head injury.

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Forgetting

• Forgetting is a result of either
• Encoding Failure
• Storage Decay OR
• Retrieval Failure

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Encoding Failure

• We fail to encode the information.
• It never has a chance to enter our LTM.

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Storage Decay

• Even if we encode something well, we can forget
  it.
• Without rehearsal, we forget thing over time.
• Ebbinghauss forgetting curve.

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Ebbinghauss Forgetting Curve
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Forgetting as Retrieval Failure

• The memory was encoded and stored, but sometimes
  you just cannot access the memory.

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Types of Retrieval Failure
Getting a new bus number and forgetting old bus
number.

• Retroactive Interference new information blocks
  out old information.
• Proactive Interference old information blocks
  out new information.

Calling your new girlfriend by old girlfriends
name.
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Self Quiz Retroactive or Proactive?

• Time Warner cable changes the channel numbers on
  your TV and you keep clicking the old channel
  numbers when trying to turn the channels instead
  of new ones.

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Self Quiz Retroactive or Proactive?

• Get a new cell phone number and your old one
  keeps getting in the way of you remembering your
  new one.

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Self Quiz Retroactive or Proactive?

• Teacher learning names of current students makes
  them forget the names of last years students.

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Self Quiz Retroactive or Proactive?

• Keep putting in locker combination from last year
  when trying to open this years locker?

14
Self Quiz Retroactive or Proactive?

• You were an expert skier but after learning to
  snowboard, you have had trouble getting used to
  skiing again.

15
Self Quiz Retroactive or Proactive?

• Mom reorganizes the kitchen and you look for a
  plate in the place it used to be.

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Revisiting Terms Retrieval Failure

• Tip of the Tongue phenomenon when we are
  certain we know something yet we are unable to
  recall it.
• Relates to retrieval failure, usually priming or
  external cues will help you recall the
  information you are looking for.

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Motivated Forgetting

• We sometimes revise our own histories.

Honey, I did stick to my diet today!!!!!!
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Motivated Forgetting
Why does is exist?

• One explanation is REPRESSION
• in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense
  mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing
  thoughts, feelings and memories from
  consciousness.

19
Memory Construction

• We sometimes alter our memories as we encode or
  retrieve them.
• Your expectations, schemas, environment may alter
  your memories.

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Misinformation Effect

• Incorporating misleading information into ones
  memory of an event.

I could tell you that you met Taylor Swift when
you were very young. You may have the memory,
but it never happened!
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Elizabeth Loftuss Research on Eyewitness
Testimony

• Loftus had individuals watch car accidents and
  then recorded results based on questioning
  procedures.

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Misinformation Effect
Leading Question About how fats were the cars
going when they smashed into each other?
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Source Amnesia(Source Attribution)

• Attributing to the wrong source an event we have
  experienced, heard about, read about or imagined.