PSC 130 Midterm III

Midterm saodinwadnawoi

Why do we forget? Four reasons

1. Encoding Quality

2. Competition during retrieval

3. Biological consolidation processes

4. Active control over memory retrieval

The major debate in memory research has been whether forgetting reflects:

• Loss of stored information or

• Inability to retrieve stored information

Answer to the debate ?

The debate between whether or not forgetting reflects loss of stored information or inability to retrieve stored information involves Two Major Causes of Forgetting and Storage Failure

Memories weaken or fail to stabilize over time which emphasizes what views

Decay, Failed consolidation, Weakening of neural traces.

What happens if storage is failed?

The memory itself is not damaged or lost.

What is Retrieval Failure and what happens if it fails

A memory can still exist but cannot be accessed which emphasizes interference, competition among memories, suppression during retrieval. If it fails, the information retains but just isn’t accessible.

What is forgetting an interaction between?

Fragile memory storage and retrieval competition.

Interference Theory: Forgetting Through Competition give example.

Memories compete for retrieval, A retrieval cue can activate multiple memories simultaneously. When multiple memories have the same cue, context, or meaning, retrieval can be harder. If instructor is associated with park, bench, bank retrieval becomes harder.

What is the Fan Effect?

Too many associations create interference Anderson (1974). The “fan” refers to number of associations connected to a concept. Important finding: As the number of associations increase, retrieval is slowed and recognitions are less accurate.

Forgetting isn’t a loss of memory but is competition among multiple stored memories.

Retrieval failure can occur even when memories still exist.

Proactive Interference (PI)

When older memories interfere with new learning. Example: Earlier trigrams interfere with recall of later trigrams.

Brown–Peterson Paradigm

Participants:

1. Learn Trigram

2. Count Backward

3. Recall Trigram

4. Repeat over trials

Performance worsens because of earlier items competing with new ones.

Originally, researchers thought forgetting during counting reflected decay.

But forgetting accumulated gradually across trials.

This pattern better supports:

buildup of interference rather than simple decay.

Retroactive Interference (RI)

New learning interferes with older memories. Thus PI = old disrupts nee

RI = New disrupts old.

Together they show that forgetting often reflects competition amongst other memories rather than disappearance of memories.

5. Release from Proactive Interference

Changing semantic category reduces forgetting. A list of furniture has a lot of interference but switching to flowers increases recall.

Demonstrates that interference depends on similarity. More related words more comp.