Forgetting:

What is forgetting?
 Forgetting refers to failure to either recall or retain
information into present consciousness. All experiences
leave traces or after-effects (images) in memory parts of the
brain. Failure to retain these traces from the parts of
memory is called Forgetting.
 It is the opposite of remembering and essentially failure in
the ability of reproducing.
 Apparent loss of information already encoded and stored
in an individual's LTM.
 Spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are
unable to be recalled from memory storage
 Short Term Memory (STM) can only retain information for
a limited amount of time, around 15 to 30 seconds unless it
is rehearsed

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 1

Nature of Forgetting:
 Generally psychologists use the term forgetting to refer
to the apparent loss information already encoded and
stored in memory.
 It is the opposite remembering and is inferred from
our inability to remember something aft given point of
time.
 Forgetting is the difference between what one has
learn and what one has retained.
 To forget means not to be able to remember a material
learned earlier.

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 2

 We are most aware of our memory when it betrays us,
i.e., we fail remember information that we need at a
particular moment.
 Many experiences that we want to remember are
forgotten in course of time.
 Forgetting is inevitable process of life having both
positive and negative values.
 According to Underwood (1968), "retention and
forgetting are thus reciprocal terms for the
quantitative aspect of memory, with retention
indicating the amount remembered under specified
conditions and forgetting the amount not
remembered under same conditions."
Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 3
 The first attempt to study forgetting was made by
German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus about a
century ago.
 Using himself as his only subject, he memorized lists
of three-letter nonsense syllables.
 A nonsense syllable is a meaningless set of three letters
with two consonants and a vowel in between, such as
XOQ, and YUC.
 A nonsense syllable can be pronounced in a single
articulation, and has no associational value.

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 4

 Ebbinghaus's experiments were designed to explore
the rate of forgetting as a function of time.
 His curve of forgetting suggested that forgetting is
rapid at first, but slows down with the passage of time.
 The most rapid forgetting occurs in the first nine
hours, and particularly in the first hour. After nine
hours, the rate of forgetting slows down, and declines
little, even after the passage of many days.
 His study had profound influence on subsequent
research on memory and forgetting.

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 5

Causes of Forgetting:
a. Theoretical Causes of Forgetting
i. Decay theory
ii. Repression theory
iii. Interference theory
Decay Theory: Decay or Disuse Theory says
forgetting takes place if some learning is not used over
a long duration of time because its memory traces are
faded out and we become unable to recall it in present
situation.

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 6

Repression Theory:
 The process of purposefully blocking or repressing memory
information
 There is some evidence that people may forget events that
are particularly unpleasant.
 One explanation for repression is Freud’s belief that
unpleasant memories filter into the subconscious mind,
where the individual is not aware of them even though they
may continue to have a profound effect on the person’s
emotional life.
 Basically, it means trying to avoid remembering or recalling
any information deliberately.
 Example: An abused child may not be able to recall the
events in details having suppressed them.
 It is also called motivated forgetting.

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 7

Interference Theory:
 Interference theory says forgetting occurs when
memories of the same type interfere to each other.
 Interference is another major cause of forgetting.
General understanding of the subject suggests that
“Information gets confused with other information in
our Long-Term Memory.
Two types of interference are:
i. Retroactive Interference
ii. Proactive Interference

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 8

Retroactive Interference:
 A mix up of previously learned information with new
and similar information is called Retroactive
information.
 Example: A student studies and understands the
events and causes of World-War I thoroughly. After
few weeks, the student studies events and causes
of World-War II.
 If the student then fails to remember the events and
causes of First World-War, this would be an example
of Retroactive Interference.

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 9

Proactive Interference:
 The phenomenon where the student fails to remember
new information having mixed it with similar previous
information is called proactive Interference.
 Example: Like the previous example, a student studies
and understands the events and causes of World-War I
in depth. After few weeks, the student studies events
and causes of World-War II.
 If the student then fails to remember the events and
causes of Second World-War, this would be an
example of Proactive Interference.

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 10

b. Memory Dysfunctions
i. Alzheimer’s disease
 Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive form of
dementia. Dementia is a broader term for
conditions caused by brain injuries or diseases that
negatively affect memory, thinking, and behavior.
 Alzheimer's disease is an irreversible, progressive
brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and
thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry
out the simplest tasks.
 There’s no cure for Alzheimer’s, but there are
treatments that can slow the progression of the
disease.

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 Anyone can get Alzheimer’s disease but certain people are
at higher risk for it. This includes people over age 65 and
those with a family history of the condition.
 The brain (mainly hippocampus) enables an
individual to remember places, events, people or any
important facts it is because able to retrieve this
information from the long-term memory.
 Alzheimer's disease affects the hippocampus by
interfering with a person's ability to form and retain
new memories, but it appears memories of events that
happened in the past can be remembered.

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 12

ii. Amnesia
Amnesia and False Memories (Neuropsychology:
Memory Deficits and Amnesia)
 Causes of Forgetting aren’t limited to just these and there are
various other factors that affect memory.
 Memory disorders like Amnesia also cause Forgetting.
 Amnesia is partial or total inability to recall or identify past
experience. It is the disease of memory.
 In the amnesic state the individual can not remember his name,
does not know how old he is or where he resides, and does not
recognize parents, relatives, or friends.
 Yet, his basic habit patterns such as ability to read, talk and so on
remain intact, and he seems quite normal aside from the
amnesia.
 Amnesia occurs after experiencing a physical or psychological
trauma (a mental condition caused by severe shock, especially
when the harmful effects last for a long time).

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 Two major types of amnesia are:
i. Psychological Amnesia (Retrograde amnesia):
 Disturbances in the process of encoding, storage, and
retrieval causes psychological amnesia. It occurs when
patients lose the ability to retrieve memories of events
prior to brain damage.
ii. Biological Amnesia (Anterograde amnesia):
 Abnormal functioning of brain results in biological
amnesia, which might be caused by any internal
problem such as uneven blood flow, drugs, diseases,
blow to the head, and other damages to brain. It is an
inability to form new memories following brain
damage.
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 Neuropsychology examines the relation of deficits in
cognition and behavior with the locus of damage
within the person’s brain, in fact, most brain damage is
fairly diffuse, spread around large areas of the brain.
However, in some cases, often the result of bullet
wounds, strokes, or indeed surgery, the damage can be
quite localized, allowing clear correlations to be drawn
between the memory deficits and the brain damage.
 The research goal of neuropsychology is to correlate
behavioral deficits or cognitive changes with the area
of the brain that is damaged. The assumption, then, is
that the damaged area of the brain is normally
involved in the function of the affected behavior or
cognitive ability.
Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 15
c. General Causes of Forgetting
i. Method of learning : Acquisition (Long term) and
Memorization/rote learning (short term)
ii. Mental injury
iii. Emotional disturbance
iv. Old age
v. Nature of materials (uninterested in learning
materials)
vi. Amount of materials (whole learning—long
term and part learning—short term)

Rom Sharma, Lecturer, Lumbini Banijya Campus 16