Forgetting
Forgetting or disremembering is the apparent loss or modification of information already encoded and stored in an individual's short or long-term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from memory storage. Problems with remembering, learning and retaining new information are a few of the most common complaints of older adults.[1] Studies show that retention improves with increased rehearsal. This improvement occurs because rehearsal helps to transfer information into long-term memory.[2]
Forgetting
Difficulty in remembering recent events, problems with language, disorientation, mood swings
Forgetting curves (amount remembered as a function of time since an event was first experienced) have been extensively analyzed. The most recent evidence suggests that a power function provides the closest mathematical fit to the forgetting function.[3]
Overview[edit]
Failing to retrieve an event does not mean that this specific event has been forever forgotten. Research has shown that there are a few health behaviors that to some extent can prevent forgetting from happening so often.[4] One of the simplest ways to keep the brain healthy and prevent forgetting is to stay active and exercise. Staying active is important because overall it keeps the body healthy. When the body is healthy the brain is healthy and less inflamed as well.[4] Older adults who were more active were found to have had less episodes of forgetting compared to those older adults who were less active. A healthy diet can also contribute to a healthier brain and aging process which in turn results in less frequent forgetting.[4]
History[edit]
One of the first to study the mechanisms of forgetting was the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885). Using himself as the sole subject in his experiment, he memorized lists of three letter nonsense syllable words—two consonants and one vowel in the middle. He then measured his own capacity to relearn a given list of words after a variety of given time period. He found that forgetting occurs in a systematic manner, beginning rapidly and then leveling off.[5] Although his methods were primitive, his basic premises have held true today and have been reaffirmed by more methodologically sound methods.[6] The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve is the name of his results which he plotted out and made 2 conclusions. The first being that much of what we forget is lost soon after it is originally learned. The second being that the amount of forgetting eventually levels off.[7]
Around the same time Ebbinghaus developed the forgetting curve, psychologist Sigmund Freud theorized that people intentionally forgot things in order to push bad thoughts and feelings deep into their unconscious, a process he called "repression".[8]
There is debate as to whether (or how often) memory repression really occurs[9] and mainstream psychology holds that true memory repression occurs only very rarely.[10]
One process model for memory was proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in the 1960s as a way to explain the operation of memory. This modal model of memory, also known as the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory, suggests there are three types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.[11] Each type of memory is separate in its capacity and duration. In the modal model, how quickly information is forgotten is related to the type of memory where that information is stored. Information in the first stage, sensory memory, is forgotten after only a few seconds. In the second stage, short-term memory, information is forgotten after about 20 years. While information in long-term memory can be remembered for minutes or even decades, it may be forgotten when the retrieval processes for that information fail.[5]
Concerning unwanted memories, modern terminology divides motivated forgetting into unconscious repression (which is disputed) and conscious thought suppression.