module 2.7

anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new memories due to injury or illness

retrograde amnesia

inability to retrieve information from one’s past due to injury or illness

When do we forget

At any stage. When we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it

Why do we forget?

encoding failure, storage decay, retrieval failure

Encoding failure

Much of what we sense we never notice, and what we fail to encode, we will never remember.

Forgetting curve (Storage decay)

a graph that shows how that memory of new information fades quickly and levels out

Retrieval failure

Can’t remember an event stored in long-term memory

Proactive interference

foward-acting disruptive effect of OLD learning on recall of NEW information

Retroactive interference

backward-acting disruptive effect of NEW learning on recall of OLD information

Sleep on retroactive interference

More sleep allows more less interference to occur so recall is better.

Motivated forgetting

As Sigmund Freud says, people may want to forget unwanted memories either consciously or unconsciously

Repression

defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

What opposes repression?

Margaret McKinnon interviewed plane crash survivors and found that with trauma did not come repression, but instead vivid memory

reconsolidation

a process where previously stored memories, when retrieved might be altered before they are stored again

misinformation effect

occurs when misleading information has distorted one’s memory of an event

Imagination effect

Sometimes imaginary things get more and more familiar, and therefore seem real.

Source Amnesia

cant remember how, when, or where information was learned or imagined

deja vu

Feeling that you’ve seen something before. Source amnesia is a possible explanation for this.

Child abuse

Sometimes a well-meaning therapist, the misinformation effect and rehearsal of incorrect information can lead to false accusations of child abuse

Reliability of young children’s eyewitness descriptions

They can be wrong even if sincere

Research on children’s recall

Asked 3 yo to point at areas where doctor touched them. Despite not receiving genital examinations, they pointed at their genitals. This makes them unreliable.