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REVIEW Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory

Learning Objectives

Test Yourself by taking a moment to answer each of these Learning Objective Questions (repeated here from within the module). Research suggests that trying to answer these questions on your own will improve your long-term memory of the concepts (McDaniel et al., 2009).

Question

24-1 Why do we forget?
ANSWER: Anterograde amnesia is an inability to form new memories. Retrograde amnesia is an inability to retrieve old memories. Normal forgetting can happen because we have never encoded information (encoding failure); because the physical trace has decayed (storage decay); or because we cannot retrieve what we have encoded and stored (retrieval failure). Retrieval problems may result from proactive (forward-acting) interference, as prior learning interferes with recall of new information, or from retroactive (backward-acting) interference, as new learning disrupts recall of old information. Some believe that motivated forgetting occurs, but researchers have found little evidence of repression.

Question

24-2 How do misinformation, imagination, and source amnesia influence our memory construction? How do we decide whether a memory is real or false?
ANSWER: Memories can be continually revised when retrieved, a process memory researchers call reconsolidation. In experiments demonstrating the misinformation effect, people have formed false memories, incorporating misleading details after receiving the wrong information after an event or after repeatedly imagining and rehearsing something that never happened. When we reassemble a memory during retrieval, we may attribute it to the wrong source (source amnesia). Source amnesia may help explain déjà vu. False memories feel like real memories and can be persistent but are usually limited to the gist of the event.

Question

24-3 How reliable are young children's eyewitness descriptions?
ANSWER: Children are susceptible to the misinformation effect, but if questioned in neutral words they understand, they can accurately recall events and people involved in them.

Question

24-4 Why are reports of repressed and recovered memories so hotly debated?
ANSWER: The debate (between memory researchers and some well-meaning therapists) focuses on whether most memories of early childhood abuse are repressed and can be recovered during therapy using “memory work” techniques often involving leading questions or hypnosis. Psychologists now agree that (1) sexual abuse happens; (2) injustice happens; (3) forgetting happens; (4) recovered memories are commonplace; (5) memories of things that happened before age 3 are unreliable; (6) memories “recovered” under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable; and (7) memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting.

Question

24-5 How can you use memory research findings to do better in this and other courses?
ANSWER: Memory research findings suggest the following strategies for improving memory: Study repeatedly, make material meaningful, activate retrieval cues, use mnemonic devices, minimize interference, sleep more, and test yourself to be sure you can retrieve, as well as recognize, material.

Terms and Concepts to Remember

Test yourself on these terms.

Question

anterograde amnesia (p. 302)
retrograde amnesia (p. 302)
proactive interference (p. 304)
retroactive interference (p. 304)
repression (p. 306)
reconsolidation (p. 306)
misinformation effect (p. 307)
source amnesia (p. 308)
déjà vu (p. 308)
the backward-acting disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.
attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. (Also called source misattribution.) Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories.
a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again.
when misleading information has corrupted one's memory of an event.
that eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.
an inability to form new memories.
in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
an inability to retrieve information from one's past.
the forward-acting disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.

Experience the Testing Effect

Test yourself repeatedly throughout your studies. This will not only help you figure out what you know and don’t know; the testing itself will help you learn and remember the information more effectively thanks to the testing effect.

Question 8.13

1. When forgetting is due to encoding failure, information has not been transferred from

A.
B.
C.
D.

Question 8.14

2. Ebbinghaus' “forgetting curve” shows that after an initial decline, memory for novel information tends to

A.
B.
C.
D.

Question 8.15

3. The hour before sleep is a good time to memorize information, because going to sleep after learning new material minimizes interference.

Question 8.16

4. Freud proposed that painful or unacceptable memories are blocked from consciousness through a mechanism called .

Question 8.17

5. One reason false memories form is our tendency to fill in memory gaps with our reasonable guesses and assumptions, sometimes based on misleading information. This tendency is an example of

A.
B.
C.
D.

Question 8.18

6. Eliza's family loves to tell the story of how she “stole the show” as a 2-year-old, dancing at her aunt's wedding reception. Even though she was so young, Eliza says she can recall the event clearly. How is this possible?
ANSWER: Eliza's immature hippocampus and lack of verbal skills would have prevented her from encoding an explicit memory of the wedding reception at the age of two. It's more likely that Eliza learned information (from hearing the story repeatedly) that she eventually constructed into a memory that feels very real.

Question 8.19

7. We may recognize a face at a social gathering but be unable to remember how we know that person. This is an example of .

Question 8.20

8. When a situation triggers the feeling that “I've been here before,” you are experiencing .

Question 8.21

9. Children can be accurate eyewitnesses if

A.
B.
C.
D.

Question 8.22

10. Psychologists involved in the study of memories of abuse tend to disagree with each other about which of the following statements?

A.
B.
C.
D.

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