Module 26 Review

REVIEW Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Improving Memory

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE Take a moment to answer each of these Learning Objective Questions (repeated here from within this section). Then click the 'show answer' button to check your answers. Research suggests that trying to answer these questions on your own will improve your long-term retention (McDaniel et al., 2009).

26-1 Why do we forget?

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.

26-2 How do misinformation, imagination, and source amnesia influence our memory construction? How do we decide whether a memory is real or false?

In experiments demonstrating the misinformation effect, people have formed false memories, incorporating misleading details, after receiving 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.

26-3 How reliable are young children’s eyewitness descriptions?

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.

26-4 Why are reports of repressed and recovered memories so hotly debated?

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 using 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.

26-5 How can you use memory research findings to do better in this and other courses?

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

RETRIEVAL PRACTICE Match each of the terms on the left with its definition on the right. Click on the term first and then click on the matching definition. As you match them correctly they will move to the bottom of the activity.

Question

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