Meaning
Literary meaning – Fails to remember
Meaning in psychological parlance – Inability to
recall stored information into the present state of mind.
Definition
According
to Bhatia (2009), “Forgetting is the failure of the individual to revive in
consciousness an idea or group of ideas without the help of the original
stimuli”.
According
to Drever (1952), “Forgetting means
failure at any time to recall experience, when attempting to do so, or to
perform an action previously learnt”.
Introduction
Hermann
Ebbinghaus (1913) pioneered the study of ‘forgetting’. He created nonsense
syllables (consonant-vowel-consonant) (meaningless words) to test his memory.
Out of his experiments on himself he drew a curve which is famously called as
‘Forgetting Curve’.
The
forgetting graph indicates that forgetting occurs fast within first hour
(almost 56%). The curve indicates that forgetting is fastest within 1 hour of
learning. This means that when the retained material is not rehearsed or
activated frequently it is likely to be forgotten.
Forgetting
is the phenomenon where tracking and identification of engrams becomes almost
impossible consequently failing to bring them back in consciousness.
Forgetting has two inherent components i.e.
(i) Lack of availability – It means
stored information is no more available.
(ii) Lack of accessibility – It means
the stored information is available but not accessible for recalling.
Characteristics
of Forgetting
(i) Forgetting
occurs in both STM and LTM. In STM due to limited capacity, duration,
displacement and trace decay while in LTM due to interference, trace decay and
various other factors.
(ii) Forgetting
is caused due to fading of information. Fading is faster in STM than LTM.
(iii) Lack of
adequate attention or focus facilitates forgetting.
(iv) Retrieval
failure is the one of major causes of forgetting.
(v) Forgetting
can be motivated.
(vi) Forgetting
can have psychological, biological and social contexts.
(vii) Forgetting
is the function of lack of accessibility and/or availability of information.
Causes of
Forgetting
(i) Psychological
Amnesia (Encoding and Storage failure)
(ii) Biological
amnesia
(iii) Social
Amnesia (Beiner, 2018)
(iv) Trace
decay
(v) Interference
(vi) Delay in
rehearsal
(vii) Lack of
rehearsal (maintenance & elaborate)
(viii) Retrieval
failure
(ix) Entropy
through disuse
(x) Dearth
of Storage Space
(xi) Motivation
to forget
(xii) Lack of
consolidation
(xiii) Lack of
physical activity and poor diet
(xiv) Ageing
(xv) Nature of
material learned
Important
Theories of Forgetting
(i) Interference Theory – This
theory suggest that information causes interference in retrieval and recall of
other information. The interference of two types i.e. Proactive and Retroactive
interference.
(a) Proactive
Interference – When previously learned information causes disturbance in retrieval of newer information.
(b) Retroactive
Interference – When newer
information interferes with
retrieval of previously learned information.
(ii) Trace Decay Theory [use it or lose it] – This
theory suggests that LTM is formed due to occurrence of physical changes in the
brain [memory trace] (Brown, 1958). The loss of these traces [engrams] due to
several factors such as disuse, passage of time etc. leads to forgetting.
References:
1. NCERT,
XI Psychology Text book.
2. Beiner,
Guy (2018). Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198749356.
3. Brown,
J. (1958). Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental
psychology, 10, 12-21.
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