The Theories Of Forgetting

Memory or forgetting’ labels a diverse set of cognitive capacities by which we retain information and reconstruct past experiences, usually for present purposes. Memory is one of the most important ways by which our histories animate our current actions and experiences. Most notably, the human ability to conjure up long-gone but specific episodes of our lives is both familiar and puzzling, and is a key aspect of personal identity. Memory seems to be a source of knowledge. We remember experiences and events which are not happening now, so memory differs from perception. We remember events which really happened, so memory is unlike pure imagination. Yet, in practice, there can be close interactions between remembering, perceiving, and imagining. Remembering is often suffused with emotion, and is closely involved in both extended affective states such as love and grief, and socially significant practices such as promising and commemorating. It is essential for much reasoning and decision-making, both individual and collective. It is connected in obscure ways with dreaming. Some memories are shaped by language, others by imagery. Much of our moral and social life depends on the peculiar ways in which we are embedded in time. Memory goes wrong in mundane and minor, or in dramatic and disastrous ways.

Why We Forget

Forgetting is actually both necessary and useful. Imagine remembering every single second of every single day of your life. It would be very difficult to keep all the information organized and to focus on one thing at a time. There is just too much information to be remembered. We automatically forget most of the sensory information we take in without even realizing it.

FADING THEORY

This theory is based on a simple concept: “used or it will lose.” This means that when you know some information or some of the facts, and do not try to remember or to mention some from time to time, you will be automatically deleted from the brain.

The brain needs to exercise and active investigation in order to find information quickly and accurately, you will lose value if the memory is not used from time to time, which means that the information above will be the dust and dirt, and become distorted after the time of neglect.

A famous study on forgetting textbook materials compared the percentage of material remembered after different intervals of time. The results were as follows:

After 1 day 54% was remembered.

After 7 days 35% was remembered.

After 14 days 21% was remembered.

After 21 days 18% was remembered.

After 28 days 19% was remembered.

After 63 days 17% was remembered.

Now, we know a little about the function of the theory of fading, we can start to develop some strategies that will help us to continue to store information that we have in our memories for a long time or even forever! For example, study the same material every time a specific example, for a week or a month.

The strategy is to prevent you from forgetting what I learned because of your information transmitted from the short-term memory to long-term memory. For example, remember some of the information set out in the small study of chemistry and biology of the time I was in tenth grade

RETRIEVAL THEORY

According to this theory, if you are unable to access the part of the information in your memory, and the reason is that the encoding is not sufficient, or there is no relationship to the existing semantic knowledge, or that is not suitable for retrieval indexes.

However, the information stored still exist somewhere in memory, and can not remember at this moment, this does not mean it is faded and erased, but is in place, evidence that at another time, and suddenly be able to access them.

In other words, any information or located in an inexact science, will remain in our memory storage for a period of time. And thus the absence of the so-called: Oblivion! Here, the question arises, what happened to the information learned? Answer: it is simply irrelevant at this moment that you want to retrieve, but the “information” in your mind. Whether the information has disappeared completely, or has been lost, the result it the same-it has been forgotten.

You may experience the “tip of the tongue” syndrome with your brain. It’s there somewhere but you can’t find it. There are unconscious mechanisms that make us forget unpleasant or painful facts.

The key to avoiding retrieval problems is to try your best to label and categorize file information correctly in your brain. So, you put every fact you learn in its right region of your memory storage, then there will not be any misfiling because you know where you did store that piece of information and you will easily and quickly find it any time you need them without wasting time and making big effort.

Interference Theory

ever Feel at times that your mind is like the flood … The reason for this is, that the information is not used often are not fully integrated and moved to the long-term memory, here you will bear in mind because there is no place in the short-term memory for this information.

In other words, that the information that we have tried to keep in mind, in fact stored incorrectly, as it moved immediately to the memory without any long-term storage in short-term memory, and also was stored incomplete, causing distorted and not remember.

This theory is based on the principle of limited space. You can also add new information to keep, and the evolution of the conflict between old and new information on the extent of the available space. New information try to push down old ones (backward interference) .On the other hand old information try to push away new ones (forward interference). In this case our minds can be considered as an arena! Information is always in a fight, some win and other lose.

The key to avoiding retrieval problems is to try your best to label and categorize file information correctly in your brain. So, you put every fact you learn in its right region of your memory storage, then there will not be any misfiling because you know where you did store that piece of information and you will easily and quickly find it any time you need them without wasting time and making big effort.Anyways, the best way to avoid this problem is to consider new information as an updating process to our old information, so they do not conflict each other.

Interactive Interference Theory

when you are learning a great deal of information at one time, you tend to remember best what is read or presented first and last. For example, imagine that you have learned three different facts in different times, according to this theory you are more likely to forget the middle on … why? Because the first and the last facts will attack the middle one and try their best to delete it from your memory storage. The middle fact also tries to attack the first and the last facts before being deleted. So, it will cause some damage to them.

Interference theory proposes that people forget information because of competition from other material. Studies have shown that test material that is similar to material studied during the intervening period, the greater interference and poorer the retention of test material. Two types of interference have been identified. These are proactive and retroactive interference.

Interference theory has received reasonable empirical support. As cited in Myers, Jenkins and Dallenbach found that sleep and minimal activity after studying can have a profound positive effect on later recall of nonsense syllables (see above). They suggested that an hour before one falls asleep may be the best time for one to commit information to memory. Interference theory asserts that memories are forgotten because of competition among bits of information. If one stays awake, one is more at risk for competing information

The key to avoiding this problem is to look for connections and relationships between ideas so that they can be “filed together” or at least combined without having any problem. The whole thing then depends on finding the common factor. The hardest part in this theory I think- is to find the best relationships between the information no matter if they were logical or not, the most important thing is to remember that relationships.

Anyways, the best way to avoid this problem is to consider new information as an updating process to our old information, so they do not conflict each other.

Reactive Interference Theory

The main point in this theory is your situation. The theory is simply “Remember what you want to remember”, which means that when people are interested and want to know, they increase the amount of learning and memory to become more effective.

This theory is quite acceptable, because almost everyone has encountered this theory, especially for students who fail sometimes in a subject, not because they are not smart enough, or because of difficulty of the subject, but because they are not willing to remember.

Edward Bowles, he is expert in the field of remembrance, said this theory explained very clearly, “We remember what we understand, we understand only what we want, we pay attention to that, our attention to what we want.” No matter how difficult or boring subject, if you want to record high marks, but you have interest, and will certainly see the difference

No matter how hard or boring the subject is, if you want to score high marks just create the interesting and you will feel the difference for sure. Equally important thing is to connect the subject you are studying to your environment and you will find your self fond of that subject because you are applying it in your life.

How we can improve our memory, there are some strategies:

First you have to develop and get always new information which will be remembered. Then you have to understand what you save in your mind, always read and write down what you like, keep studying, uses of visual aids. All these suggestion maybe can help people to remember all storage information would be.