Why do we forget?

Herman Ebbinghaus In 1885, Herman Ebbinghaus became the first psychologist to systematically study memory by carrying out a long exhausting experiment on himself using nonsense syllables. His research helped to establish psychology as a scientific discipline. His meticulous methods remain the basis of all psychological experimentation to this day.

He showed that learning material and committing it to memory within an hour of hearing it, will mean that we remember it for longer and can recall it more easily.

Forgetting

This is an example that Ebbinghaus obtained when he plotted one of his forgetting experiments on himself.

His finding, that information loss is very rapid at first and then levels off, holds good for many types of learned materials

The Seven Sins of Memory

Daniel Schachter, a professor of psychology at Harvard, believes that forgetting is an essential function of human memory, allowing it to work efficiently. Some of the experiences we go through and the information we learn may need to be remembered, but much is irrelevant and would take up valuable “storage space” in our memory and so is deleted, to use an analogy with computers. He lists 7 ways in which memory can let us down and calls these “ The 7 sins of memory.”

Cue dependency Eysenck (1998) suggested that this is the most common

reason for forgetting. We have all experienced the “tip of the tongue”

phenomenon in which we know that we know something , but are temporarily unable to retrieve it.

Tulving(1972) proposed that forgetting takes place when we have the information that we are seeking in our memory but we lack the necessary cues to access it.

Cues are additional pieces of information that guide us to the information that we are seeking, similar to the contents page of a book.

State and content cues Context dependent cues are

cues from the external environment such as familiar sights , sounds and smells.

State dependent cues or physiological cues, are the state that we are in when we learn something. These internal cues include emotion.

Context cues

The Godden and Baddeley study used two different contexts, a beach and

underwater.

They found that recall was significantly better if the context was the same as

when information was learned.

Motivated Forgetting: Repression Sigmund Freud(1894) proposed

the idea that we forget facts or events that provoke anxiety or unhappiness, thus protecting ourselves form having to experience these negative emotions.

He considered that repression was used as a defence mechanism

He believed that repressed memories remain active in the mind, although the individual may not be aware of them.

The accuracy of recovered memories

Recovered memory takes place when an event comes to mind that we have not been able to recall for some time.

In the 1990’s a number of patients in therapy “recovered” memories of events such as

childhood sexual abuse that did not actually happen.

The term “false memory syndrome” describes this occurrence.

How to improve your memory

How to improve your memory 1 Diet:

Avoid high sugar fast foods. Eat blueberries and strawberries (high in

flavonoids)and oily fish(high in Omega 3 fatty acids).

Exercise: Short bursts of exercise may

make it easier to learn. This may encourage the release

of neurotransmitters involved in forming new

connections between brain cells.

How to improve your memory 2

Make a gesture: Acting out an idea with

relevant hand gestures can improve later recall,

but even simple eye movements might help. Engage your nose:

Smells tend to trigger particular emotional

memories and memories from our childhood.

How to improve your memory 3 Imagery:

Create a mental image of things that have to be remembered.

The more bizarre and colourful the images; the more

memorable they are likely to be.

Methods of Loci: Here, you visualise the people and facts that you

need to remember in particular locations such as a room in a house.

How to improve your memory 4

ROYGBIV R O Y G B I V

N P L Y T S H W No planes landed

yesterday, ten stewardesses have warts.

Use Mnemonics This is a method where you take the initial letter of each

word and make it into a memorable phrase preferably one that has possibilities for

imagery.

How to improve your memory 5 Use memory aids

External memory aids can also be used.

These may include; lists, diaries, mobile phones and post its.

Can chocolate boost memory? Flavanols, a chemical, found in cocoa beans seemed to enhance memory in rodents. Research in humans suggest that they may boost older people’s memories, though only if eaten in huge quantities. “ You would have to eat so many chocolate bars that you would damage your health” Scott Small Columbia University New York ( reported in New Scientist 1/11/14)

Does ageing affect memory ?

Is cognitive decline a myth? Dr Michael Ramscar leads a research team at Tubingen university in Germany, and he makes the startling claim that cognitive decline is a myth.

So how does he explain the difficulty many older people have in remembering names , or recalling a particular word?

As we age, he says, we accumulate more and more knowledge, and so, when the brain wants to extract a piece of information, it has a greater quantity of memorised information to search through.

The hippocampal part of the brain plays a key part in memory.

Declining mental ability

“ While mental ability does decline, on average , with age in a healthy person, some decline is avoidable and the extent of any change that does occur is generally less than popularly believed.” Saga Magazine

Memory A final note. This session has introduced some of the theories

of memory and forgetting. Everyone’s memory fades with age, but using

some of the suggestions listed above may limit this loss.

The use of brain scans has resulted in much more information about brain activities such as neural networks and their role in memory becoming available.