Basics of Memory: Causes of Forgetting

Flashcards covering Ebbinghaus's foundational experiments, laws of memory, and the four major theories of forgetting: decay, interference, consolidation, and inhibition (including Retrieval-Induced Forgetting).

Who was Hermann Ebbinghaus, and what type of stimuli did he use in his memory experiments?

Hermann Ebbinghaus was the first experimental psychologist of memory. He studied memory by having subjects learn randomized lists of non-meaningful nonsense trigrams consisting of consonant-vowel-consonant combinations (such as "teg", "raz", and "fip").

What is the spacing effect discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus?

The spacing effect states that repetitions of items are more effective for learning when spaced out over time (e.g., A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C) rather than massed consecutively (e.g., A-A-A-B-B-B-C-C-C).

How do psychological laws differ from psychological theories?

A law states an invariance or regularity in data or the natural world, whereas a theory provides an explanatory framework for phenomena and laws in the natural world.

What are the Law of Practice and the Yerkes-Dodson Law?

The Law of Practice states that performance improves as a logarithmic function of practice. The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that performance is an inverted-U shaped function of arousal.

What is the Law of Recency, and what is the shape of the recency function?

The Law of Recency states that recent information is almost always better remembered than older information. The recency function is non-linear, meaning older information decays at a slower rate than newer information.

What is the Law of Primacy, and under what condition did Murdock and Carey (1972) observe it?

The Law of Primacy refers to better memory for items at the start of a sequence. Murdock and Carey (1972) demonstrated that changes in modality (such as switching from auditory to visual presentation) induce primacy effects at the point of change.

What is the Peterson paradox regarding spaced versus massed repetition?

The Peterson paradox refers to the finding that spaced repetitions perform worse than massed repetitions at a very short retention delay, but perform significantly better after a long retention delay.

According to Roediger and Karpicke (2006), how does testing compare to re-learning over short versus long retention intervals?

Studying material twice (Study, Study) yields higher recall at a very short delay ($5\,\text{minutes}$), but testing (Study, Test) produces superior retention at longer delays, such as $2\,\text{days}$ and $1\,\text{week}$.

What is the distinction between encoding failure and retrieval failure in forgetting?

Encoding failure occurs when information was never learned or stored in memory initially. Retrieval failure occurs when information was successfully learned initially, but cannot be retrieved at a later time.

What are the four major theories of retrieval failure?

The four theories are Decay Theory, Interference Theory, Consolidation Theory, and Inhibition Theory.

What is the Brown-Peterson paradigm, and how was rehearsal prevented?

In the Brown-Peterson paradigm, participants study a trigram and then count backwards by seven to prevent rehearsal. Results showed almost no memory remaining after approximately $20\,\text{seconds}$.

How did John McGeoch (1932) criticize Decay Theory?

McGeoch argued that decay theory is conceptually flawed because time itself does not cause degradation (analogous to how iron rusts over time, but time isn't the physical cause); rather, forgetting occurs because more interfering mental activity and competition accumulate as time passes.

What is the difference between proactive interference and retroactive interference?

Proactive interference is the inability to retrieve new associates due to interference from older learned information. Retroactive interference is the inability to retrieve older associates due to interference from newer learned information.

How does Interference Theory explain worse performance on AB-AC lists compared to AB-CD lists?

AB-AC lists suffer from response competition because presenting cue A activates both target B and target C, which compete for retrieval, whereas AB-CD lists have distinct cues with no overlapping response competition.

What re-analysis did Underwood (1957) perform on Brown-Peterson task results, and what was the main predictor of forgetting?

Underwood re-analyzed Brown-Peterson results and found that the number of previous experimental trials was the primary predictor of forgetting, as participants suffered proactive interference from earlier trials.

What did Keppel and Underwood (1962) discover about forgetting on the first trial of a Brown-Peterson task?

They discovered that on the very first trial of the experiment, participants showed almost no forgetting over a $20\,\text{second}$ retention interval.

What is release from proactive interference, as demonstrated by Wickens, Born, and Allen (1963)?

Release from proactive interference occurs when changing the stimulus category or modality (e.g., switching from numbers to letters on trial 4) leads to a significant recovery in recall performance because the new category suffers less interference from previously learned items.

According to Consolidation Theory, what are the two states of stored memories?

Stored memories exist in either a perseveration period (where memories are vulnerable and fragile) or a consolidation phase (where memories that survive perseveration are permanently stored).

What did Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924) discover regarding sleep, wakefulness, and memory retention?

They found that going to sleep after learning led to significantly better memory retention than remaining awake, supporting the idea that mental activity during wakefulness prevents consolidation.

What did Duncan (1949) observe regarding the time delay between learning and electroconvulsive shock (ECS) in rats?

Duncan found that a longer delay between learning and ECS resulted in better memory; when ECS was administered $1\,\text{hour}$ after learning, rats performed as well as unshocked controls.

What finding by Quartermaine, McEwen, and Azmitia (1972) contradicted Consolidation Theory?

They found that rats tested soon after receiving ECS showed no memory of learned responses, but when tested $72\,\text{hours}$ after ECS, they exhibited memory, contradicting the consolidation prediction that unconsolidated memories are permanently lost.

How do exponential and power functions differ in describing the rate of forgetting over time?

An exponential function implies that loss is a fixed proportion for each unit of time (e.g., $50\%$ lost each hour), whereas a power function implies that proportional loss decreases with respect to time (e.g., $50\%$ lost in the first hour, $40\%$ in the next hour). Data overwhelmingly support a power function.

How did Ecker, Tay, and Lewandowsky (2015) challenge the consolidation explanation of post-study rest benefits?

Ecker et al. (2015) showed that longer pre-study rest also leads to better memory retention for a list. Consolidation cannot explain pre-study rest benefits because consolidation can only occur after learning, supporting a temporal context interference model instead.

What is Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF), as discovered by Anderson, Bjork, and Bjork (1994)?

Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF) is the phenomenon in which the act of retrieving some items from long-term memory causes long-lasting forgetting of unpracticed, related items from the same category.

In the Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF) paradigm, what do the item designations Rp+, Rp-, and Nrp stand for?

Rp+ represents practiced items from practiced categories; Rp- represents unpracticed items from practiced categories; Nrp represents unpracticed items from unpracticed categories, serving as a baseline control.

How is the Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF) effect specifically demonstrated in the test phase of the RIF paradigm?

The RIF effect is demonstrated when recall performance for unpracticed items from practiced categories (Rp- items) is significantly lower than recall performance for unpracticed items from unpracticed control categories (Nrp items).

What is the cue independence assumption of Inhibition Theory, and how was it confirmed by Anderson and Spellman (1995)?

Cue independence assumes that item suppression directly weakens the item itself regardless of the retrieval cue. Anderson and Spellman (1995) confirmed this by showing that practicing "FRUIT-ORANGE" impaired later recall of "APPLE" even when tested with a novel cue ("RED-APPLE").

What is the retrieval dependence assumption of Inhibition Theory?

Retrieval dependence assumes that suppression occurs only when competition arises during retrieval; without retrieval competition (e.g., restudying items or having exemplars cue their own category), Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF) does not occur.

What three factors explain why the fundamental cause of forgetting remains unresolved in psychology?

1. Experiments provide only short snapshots of memory (e.g., $\sim 45\,\text{minutes}$ of data from small samples); 2. Human brain recording techniques are non-invasive and limited; 3. Computational modeling of memory across diverse memory tasks is still in its infancy.