7.15– The Many Causes of Forgetting

Tip-of-the-tongue-phenomenon

a failure to retrieve information despite confidence that it is stored in memory

Motivated forgetting

willful forgetting of information so that it is less likely to be retrieved later

Encoding failure

happens when information fails to transfer from short-term memory into long-term memory

Weapon focus

a psychological phenomenon where an eyewitness to a violent crime concentrates intensely on the perpetrator's weapon (such as a gun or knife) rather than on other details, like the attacker's face, clothing, or vehicle

Inattentional-memory deficits

cognitive challenges where an inability to sustain focus directly disrupts the brain's capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information