Memory 291

If you do not have Alzheimer’s or another dementia, taking coconut oil may not do much of
anything except adversely affect your blood work on your next trip to the doctor.
Fish oil supplements have a slightly better track record for helping slow the rates of
cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer’s disease but may do very little for healthy people
(Connor et al., 2012; Daiello et al., 2014). The safest advice to improve your memory and
possibly prevent or postpone any symptoms of dementia may simply be to remain mentally
active (Naqvi et al., 2013). Work crossword puzzles, read, and keep those neurons firing!

What Were We Talking About? Forgetting

Why do we forget things? And why do we forget some things
but not others?

Most of us, at some point in our busy lives, have trouble remembering things, especially
events from the distant past. What if you could remember nearly every day of your life? This
rare ability is possessed by Brad Williams, who is known as the “Human Google.” Brad is one
of a small group of individuals with a syndrome called hyperthymesia (hī-p r-thī-mē-sē-uh).
e
A person with hyperthymesia not only has an astonishing and rare ability to recall specific
events from his or her personal past but also spends an unusually large amount of time think-
ing about that personal past. Brad can recall almost any news event or personal event he
himself has experienced, particularly specific dates—and even the weather on those dates.
You may think that being able to remember everything like Brad Williams would
be wonderful. But it’s important to consider that people with hyperthymesia not only
have the ability to remember nearly everything but also have the inability to forget.
The ability to forget may be nearly as vital to human thought processes as the ability
to remember. William James, one of the founders of the field of psychology, said, "If
we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remem-
bered nothing" (James, 1890, 2002). Adaptive forgetting is the idea that being able to
suppress information that we no longer need makes it easier to remember what we
do need (Kuhl et al., 2007; MacLeod, 1998; Nairne, 2015; Wimber et al., 2015.) Learn
more about Brad Williams and hyperthymesia in the video Reasons for Forgetting.

CC

Watch the Video Reasons for Forgetting on MyPsychLab

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 292 CHAPTER 6

A similar problem was experienced in the case of A. R. Luria’s (1968) famous mne-
monist, Mr. S. (A mnemonist is a memory expert or someone with exceptional memory
ability.) Mr. S. was a performing mnemonist, astonishing his audiences with lists of num-
bers that he memorized in minutes. But Mr. S. found that he was unable to forget the lists.
He also could not easily separate important memories from trivial ones, and each time he
looked at an object or read a word, images stimulated by that object or word would flood
his mind. He eventually invented a way to “forget” things—by writing them on a piece
of paper and then burning the paper (Luria, 1968).
The ability to forget seems necessary to one’s sanity if the experience of Mr. S. is any
indicator. But how fast do people forget things? Are there some things that are harder or
easier to forget?

EBBINGHAUS AND THE FORGETTING CURVE

6.10 Describe the "curve of forgetting."
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913) was one of the first researchers to study forgetting. Because
he did not want any verbal associations to aid him in remembering, he created several
lists of “nonsense syllables,” pronounceable but meaningless (such as GEX and WOL).
He memorized a list, waited a specific amount of time, and then tried to retrieve the
list, graphing his results each time. The result has become a familiar graph: the curve of
forgetting. This graph clearly shows that forgetting happens quickly within the first hour
after learning the lists and then tapers off gradually. (See Figure 6.7.) In other words,
forgetting is greatest just after learning. This curve can be applied to other types of infor-
mation as well. Although meaningful material is forgotten much more slowly and much
less completely, the pattern obtained when testing for forgetting is similar (Conway et al.,
1992).
In his early studies, Ebbinghaus (1885) found that it is also important not to try
to “cram” information you want to remember into your brain. Research has found that
spacing out one’s study sessions, or distributed practice, will produce far better retrieval
of information studied in this way than does massed practice, or the attempt to study a
body of material all at once. For example, studying your psychology material for 3 hours
may make you feel that you’ve done some really hard work, and you have. Unfortu-
nately, you won’t remember as much of what you studied as you would if you had

100
Immediate recall
Percentage remembered

80

60 20 minutes

1 hour
curve of forgetting 40 9 hours
a graph showing a distinct pattern in
which forgetting is very fast within the 20
0 2 4 6 8 10 15 20 25 31
first hour after learning a list and then
Elapsed time (days)
tapers off gradually.

distributed practice
spacing the study of material to be Figure 6.7 Curve of Forgetting
remembered by including breaks Ebbinghaus found that his recall of words from his memorized word lists was greatest immediately after
between study periods. learning the list but rapidly decreased within the first hour. After the first hour, forgetting leveled off.

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 Memory 293

shorter study times of 30 minutes to an hour followed by short breaks (Cepeda et al.,
2006; Dempster & Farris, 1990; Donovan & Radosevich, 1999; Simon & Bjork, 2001).
to Learning Objective PIA.5.

REASONS WE FORGET
6.11 Identify some common reasons people forget things.
There are several reasons people forget things. We’ll examine three theories here.
ENCODING FAILURE One of the simplest is that some things never get encoded in the
first place. Your friend, for example, may have said something to you as he walked out
the door, and you may have heard him, but if you weren’t paying attention to what he
said, it would not get past sensory memory. This isn’t forgetting so much as it is encod-
ing failure, the failure to process information into memory. Researchers (Nickerson &
Adams, 1979) developed a test of long-term memory using images of a common object
for many people, a penny. Look at Figure 6.8. Which view of a stop sign is the correct
one? People see stop signs nearly every day, but how many people actually look at them
that closely so the information is encoded into long-term memory?

The fact that this man can remember the

things shown in the pictures even after many
years makes it unlikely that the memory
trace decay theory can explain all forgetting
in long-term memory.

Figure 6.8 Stop!

Many people look at stop signs multiple times a day. Which of these stop signs is closest to an actual stop
sign? The answer can be found on the next page.
encoding failure
failure to process information into
MEMORY TRACE DECAY THEORY One of the older theories of forgetting involves the memory.
concept of a memory trace. A memory trace is some physical change in the brain, per-
memory trace
haps in a neuron or in the activity between neurons, which occurs when a memory is
physical change in the brain that
formed (Brown, 1958; Peterson & Peterson, 1959). Over time, if these traces are not used,
occurs when a memory is formed.
they may decay, fading into nothing. It would be similar to what happens when a num-
ber of people walk across a particular patch of grass, causing a path to appear in which decay
the grass is trampled down and perhaps turning brown. But if people stop using the
loss of memory due to the passage of
path, the grass grows back and the path disappears. time, during which the memory trace
Forgetting in sensory memory and short-term memory seems easy to explain as is not used.
decay: Information that is not brought to attention in sensory memory or continuously
rehearsed in STM will fade away. But is decay a good explanation for forgetting from disuse
long-term memory? When referring to LTM, decay theory is usually called disuse, and another name for decay, assuming
the phrase “use it or lose it” takes on great meaning (Bjork & Bjork, 1992). Although that memories that are not used will
the fading of information from LTM through disuse sounds logical, there are many eventually decay and disappear.

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 294 CHAPTER 6

times when people can recall memories they had assumed were long for-
Proactive Interference
gotten. There must be other factors involved in the forgetting of long-term
French, learned beforehand, interferes proactively
memories.

Study French Study Spanish Spanish Test INTERFERENCE THEORY A possible explanation of LTM forgetting is
that although most long-term memories may be stored more or less per-
manently in the brain, those memories may not always be accessible to
attempted retrieval because other information interferes (Anderson &
Retroactive Interference Neely, 1995). (And even memories that are accessible are subject to con-
Spanish, learned afterwards, interferes retroactively structive processing, which can lead to inaccurate recall.) An analogy
Study French Study Spanish French Test might be this: The can of paint that Phillip wants may very well be on some
shelf in his storeroom, but there’s so much other junk in its way that he
can’t see it and can’t get to it. In the case of LTM, interference can come
from two different “directions.”
PROACTIVE INTERFERENCE Have you ever switched from driving a car with
Figure 6.9 Proactive and Retroactive Interference
the gearshift on the steering wheel to one with the gearshift on the floor of the
If a student were to study for a French exam and then a
car? If the answer is yes, you probably found that you had some trouble when
Spanish exam, interference could occur in two directions.
When taking the Spanish exam, the French information stud-
you first got into the new car. You may have grabbed at the wheel instead of
ied first may proactively interfere with the learning of the new reaching to the gearshift on the floor. The reason you reached for the gear-
Spanish information. But when taking the French exam, the shift in the “old” place is called proactive interference: the tendency for older
more recently studied Spanish information may retroactively or previously learned material to interfere with the learning (and subsequent
interfere with the retrieval of the French information. retrieval) of new material. (See Figure 6.9.)
Another example of proactive interference often occurs when someone
gets a new cell phone number. People in this situation often find themselves remember-
ing their old cell phone number or some of its digits instead of the new cell phone num-
ber when they are trying to give the new number to friends.
The answer to Figure 6.8 is the middle right RETROACTIVE INTERFERENCE When newer information interferes with the retrieval of
image. older information, this is called retroactive interference. (See Figure 6.9.) What hap-
pens when you change back from the car with the gearshift on the floor to the older car
with the gearshift on the wheel? You’ll probably reach down to the floor at least once or
twice because the newer skill retroactively interferes with remembering the old way of
doing it.
How might interference work in each of the following cases?
1. Moving from the United States to England, where people drive on the left instead
of the right side of the road.
2. Trying to use the controls on your old Blu-ray® player after having used the new
one for a year.
3. Moving from one type of cell phone system to another, such as going from an
iPhone® to an Android® system.
The different ways that forgetting occurs are summarized in Table 6.1.

proactive interference
memory problem that occurs when Table 6.1 Reasons for Forgetting
older information prevents or inter-
Reason Description
feres with the learning or retrieval of
newer information. Encoding Failure The information is not attended to and fails to be encoded.

Decay or Disuse Information that is not accessed decays from the storage system
over time.
retroactive interference
memory problem that occurs when Proactive Interference Older information already in memory interferes with the learning of
newer information.
newer information prevents or
interferes with the retrieval of older Retroactive Interference Newer information interferes with the retrieval of older
information.
information.

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