Author Archives: Kenzo Le Vaillant

Association. Is there too much information around us to remember?

Accessible Science

This is a study of the article

THE PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE OF FORGETTING by John T. Wixted

Interference

Forgetting is said to be caused by interference.

Interference

Information unrelated to what is trying to be remembered, that will get in the way of the remembering task.

There are two types of interference mentioned. Proactive and retroactive.

Proactive interference is caused by input that occured before the main information and was thought to be more of a problem than

retroactive interference, which is input that occured after the main learning event.

However, this idea was overturned in the 1970s with the discovery of sleeps effect on memory.

Sleep after input, which signifies no retroactive interference, leads to a better retention than if awake during that time. This meant retroactive interference become the main cause of forgetting.

There are several ways this can happen.

For example, mental exertion, can be retroactive interference as much as cue overload.

Mental exertion

A state caused by long and sustained cognitive activity which tires the individual out mentally.

Cue overload

When too much related information is input which creates too many associations, making it harder to recall a precise one.

In cue overload, the more related the later information is to the main one, the stronger it’s interfering effect becomes.

Retroactive interferences effect also depends on time as it has a temporal gradient.

This gradient is in the shape of a reversed u ( or an n ).

The earlier the interference happens, the less is remembered. This goes on until a certain point from which the later the interference happens ( the latest being just before retrieval, a test in the experiments ) the less is remembered.

The temporal gradient has been found in both short term ( up to 4 days ) and long term ( up to 16 days ) observations.

The later decline of the recall ability can be explained by retrieval inhibition.

Retrieval inhibition

The blocking of recall for a limited time caused by learning or recall of different associations.

If this new input happens just before the test, the retrieval inhibition will block the main information, leading to a failure of recall.

Many theories have been presented regarding the mechanism of the brain in forgetting or remembering.

One of the earliest is called ribot’s law.

Ribot’s law

Brain damage that leads to anterograde amnesia also causes retrograde amnesia for a certain period before the injury with the ones closest to the injury being the most damaged.

This tendency is particularly strong when the damaged area is the hippocampus.

The stronger tendency with hippocampal damage can be explained by the fact that new memories are created in the medial temporal lobes.

The hippocampal formation which includes the hippocampus, the dentate gyrus, the subiculum and the entorhinal cortex also has a role in memory but this time in the consolidation process.

Hippocampal formation

A struincludes the hippocampus, the dentate gyrus, the subiculum and the entorhinal cortex

The function of forgetting and time

Later, the famous ebbinghaus ( famous for his forgetting curve) stated that forgetting can be represented by a logarithmic function of time.

However, a psychologist called Wickelgren thought it was more of a power function.

Both of them have been found to be pretty accurate though the power function is said to be better than the logarithmic one. An exponential function, that seemed to work at first glance, was found to be the least precise.

All 3 functions, though different and not fully accurate, all share a common property of decreasing over time and in a proportional way. This shows the characteristic of memory called memory consolidation.

Memory consolidation

The process and property of memory in which it becomes more resistant to interference the longer it exists.

A psychologist called Jost, who based some of his theories on ebbinghaus, suggested 5 laws of forgetting. The second states that when 2 memories/associations are of the same strength but different age, the oldest will be more resistant and decay more slowly.

Related posts

Our memories aren’t perfect. And that’s perfect.

Accessible Science

This is the third part of a study of the article

The Seven Sins of Memory by Daniel L. Schacter

Persistence

The last issue our memory mechanism has is persistence.

This is not a problem with remembering correctly or remembering. This is a problem of not being able to forget.

Persistence are thoughts we try to forget but that keep popping up in our minds.

Trying to not think of something is pretty difficult.

Though this may happen for most of us by innocent images, in certain people, this can happen with traumatic events causing chronic fear, stress and phobias.

Memories containing a certain mental/ emotional state will be more accessible when in that same state.

Although thoughts can prevent these images from coming, consciously trying to remove the thought will actually make it stay more.

This is called the rebound effect.

Next time something like this happens, don’t say “ don’t think of it” to yourself, instead try thinking of something else.

Are the “sins” really bad things?

Forgetting is necessary as it helps us adapt to a new environment.

Without it, we would keep the same old habits that are of no use.

Our brain retains information that is needed and makes it more accessible. That is why the less we think of something, the harder it becomes to recall it.

No blocking would lead to an enormous amount of information running around in our heads and we would react to everything around us that we have seen before.

Blocking, looked at from another perspective, is what helps us focus on one thing by preventing our reaction to other, unnecessary things.

Biases are also patterns we create in our brains to be able to process things faster.

They’re like habits, for thinking. If we were to think about bad things and good things equally, we wouldn’t notice many dangers surrounding us.

The bias makes us remember more bad stuff as it will be more useful to be able to think of the last time you touched a hot pan and hurt yourself than the last time you touched a cold one which didn’t hurt you.

Though not all “sins” are covered, memory and it’s issues are things that have stayed with us thoroughout human evolution. Even if the times have changed, most of them are still very useful and used on a daily basis without us noticing it.

Related posts

Part 1

Part 2