How You Remember, Why You Forgot.

BY: TOREY GILLIES

What Are Memories?

Memory is a selective storage unit. The information may be stored as an image, a concept or within a mental network. Retrieval, of course, refers to the recovery of that information and putting that information to use.

Things We Remember

We remember big events such as proposals and

weddings.

Or the day when your baby is born.

Of course your graduation day!

Selective Memory

Selective memory happens similar to “selective hearing”. You remember what you want and forget certain things/events.

Remembering sentimental events are much easier than remembering the quadratic formula or definitions for your English class.

Explicit Memory

Why do we remember TV commercials and forget answers for our exams that determine our future?

Explicit Memory: Is recall or recognition. Recall is actually retrieving information you stored, for example fill in the blank or essay questions. And recognition refers to recognizing the information stored, such as multiple choice questions.

Sensory Memory

This subsystem is divided even further into storage areas for each of these: hearing, vision, smell, touch and taste. Everything you sense is sent directly to one of these categories.

The brain decides whether it is important or not important. If it’s important the impression moves on to the short term memory but if it’s not, the brain discards it and it is lost forever.

Forgetting

Forgetting: The inability to retrieve information from a memory due to a problem with encoding, storage or retrieval.

Everyone forgets things, you can forget where you last placed your car keys. Or you could forget your child in the store (it happens).

Forgetting is a natural thing for everyone. Sometimes it’s a good thing. Do you really want to remember pain or a tragic event. Forgetting can be a healing process.

Theories of Forgetting

Replacement Theory: holds that new information entering the memory replaces old information already stored.

Decay Theory: holds that some memories will dissipate if not retrieved every once in a while from the long-term memory.

Cue-Dependent Theory: holds that the retrieval of some memories are dependent upon cues that help to locate that information in the

brain. This causes you to remember or not to remember.