The Forgetting Curve Hermann Ebbinghaus 1870 studied forgetting

The Forgetting Curve • Hermann Ebbinghaus (1870) studied forgetting by repeating many lists of items over and over until he could recall them perfectly. • Ebbinghaus used 3 letter 'nonsense syllables' such as wej and ril. This was so his results would not be affected by variables such as meaningfulness and pre-existing associations • Once he had learned all the syllables he tested his recall of them after varying amounts of time, ranging from 20 minutes to 31 days.

The Forgetting Curve

The Forgetting Curve • Speed of learning and difficulty of information do not seem to affect the rate of forgetting. • Slow learners forget at about the same rate as fast learners. • Easily learned information is forgotten no less rapidly than info that is difficult to learn.

Questions • 1. Define forgetting. • 2. What are two factors that influence the rate at which we forget? • 3. Why would life be difficult if we did not have the ability to forget some information?

Biological Causes of Forgetting • Forgetting is usually associated with some damage to the brain, usually in some specific structure or area associated with memory. • Brain damage can occur through head injury, stroke, prolonged alcoholism, severe malnutrition, or some other illness or disease. • Memory loss due to biological or physiological factors is referred to as organic amnesia.

Anterograde Amnesia • Amnesia is partial or complete loss of memory, either permanently or temporarily. • Anterograde amnesia is loss of memory for experiences after to amnesia-causing event. • Memory of experiences prior to the amnesia-causing event still remains.

Retrograde Amnesia • Retrograde amnesia is loss of memory for experiences occurring before the amnesia-causing event. • This memory loss can vary from forgetting a few seconds to someone's entire life. • People who experience a blow to the head in a sporting or car accident oftene Xperience this type of amnesia.

Retrograde Amnesia • In time memories of the 'lost' period gradually return until the amnesia disappears altogether. • Often, however, the affected person never recovers any memory of what happened immediately before the event. • This is because memories were never 'embedded' in LTM because of an interruption to the consolidation process.

Alzheimer's Disease • Alzheimers is a disorder characterised by the progressive degeneration of neurons. • Plaques of brain fibres develop and cause large numbers of brain neurons to die off at a greater rate than normal. • Alzheimer's disease is distinguished from other forms of amnesia not only by the loss of past memories but the inability to form new ones.

Alzheimer’s Disease • People with Alzheimer's have greatly reduced levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. • This neurotransmitter is essential for intellectual functioning, particularly memory and learning. • There are currently treatments which increase the supply of acetylcholine to the brain.

Decay of Memory Traces • A memory trace is a physical and/or chemical change in the brain that represents stored information. • These traces form whenever we transfer new information from the STM to the LTM for permanent storage. • Forgetting is said to occur when the memory trace gradually decays or fades over time, until it is reactivated by being used occasionally.

Psychological Causes of Forgetting When a teacher asks you a question about things you have already learned, they are using retrieval cues to help you retrieve the info. Sometimes we lack the right retrieval cue to recover the information stored in LTM. The info isn’t necessarily lost, but at the point in time it is inaccessible. This is called retrieval failure.

Retrieval Cues • Context-dependent cues are cues that were present in the environment or setting which a memory was formed. E. g. sounds, smells, taste of a setting. • State-dependent cues are cues associated with the psychological processes of the person when the memory was formed. E. g. when in a sad state you are more likely to recall a memory when you were previously in that state.

Retrieval Cues Activity

Interference from other Memories • Interference occurs when one piece of information makes storing or recalling other information more difficult. • Retroactive Interference – occurs when new info interferes with the ability to recall info already in memory. E. g. learning new plays in hockey and forgetting the old ones. • Proactive Interference – occurs when info already in memory interferes with the ability to learn new info. E. g. old plays in hockey preventing you from learning new plays.

Motivated Forgetting • Motivated forgetting is said to occur when we forget because we have a strong desire to forget, usually because it is too disturbing to remember. • Suppression – involves making a deliberate, conscious effort to forget an event or experience and keep it out of conscious awareness. • Repression – involves unconsciously blocking the memory of an event from conscious awareness because it is too distressing.

Memory Mnemonic Devices

Mnemonic Devices • Mnemonic devices provide ways of improving encoding, storage and retrieval of information from LTM. • These memory devices can be simple or complex thought processes. • Furthermore, mnemonic devices tend to help us organise information as a ‘whole block’, so if we retrieve one piece of info, we’ll usually retrieve all of it.

Acronyms • Using acronyms as mnemonic devices involves forming a word from the first letters of different words that are to be recalled. • For example: SACE • South Australian Certificate of Education • We sometimes remember the acronym more than the word it represents.

Rhymes • Using rhymes as mnemonic devices involves associating info with a particular rhythm (sound) and rhyming words. • If we make a mistake when using a rhyme mnemonic, we might not be able to recall the info linked to that mnemonic.

Acrostics • Acrostics are the use of word associations to make a meaningful phrase out of the items to be remembered. • Example: My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. • Helps us remember the order of the planets: Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto

Peg-Word Method • The Peg-Word Mnemonic involves pairing a rhyming word with a number. Each word is then visually associated with the info you want to remember. • 1 is the sun 2 is a roo 3 is a bee 4 is the floor • For example , if you wanted to remember what to bring for a ski trip, you might visualise the sun with an i. Pod, a roo with skis, a bee wearing a beanie and a sleeping bag on the floor.

Method of Loci • The method of loci technique uses familiar locations as retrieval cues for info to be remembered. • For example using body parts to remember the order of planets. Starting with your head, placing a dollop of Mercury on your chin, then moving up to the lips representing Venus the Goddess of love etc.

Narrative Chaining • Narrative chaining involves joining unconnected items to one another by incorporating them in a meaningful story. • When performing a memory test, 93% of participants using narrative chaining remembered the words at a later time, compared with 13% of the control group participants.

Narrative Chaining List A grandmother both another were in and uncle born country my

List B my uncle and grandmother were both born in another country