How forgetting occurs
Uploaded by silversista on Aug 23, 2002
Without memory (An active information processing system, that receiveds, organises, stores and retrives information) every moment would be a new experience. Forgetting (the inability to retrive previously stored information) occurs when the information is not availble or accesible. Because psychologists don’t know exactly how memories are stored, or what form they take, it is not possible to say exactly how the individual forgets.. However there are several theores suggesting why forgetting occurs, such as the interferance and decay theory. Although it may seem that forgetting is a problem, infact it is necessary to keep humans sane. Otherwise humans would be bombarded with and remember unnecessary information therefor memory is a survival mechanisn (fryod)
All information detected by sensory receptors enters the sensory memory. It is the entry area of memory, wehre all the stimuli that bombard the senses are kept in their original form and are not encoded (The process of preparing information for storage in the memory system) and are kept there for a breif time.
When the indidivudal pays attention to information in the sensory memory, the information enters short term memory (STM) It is a memory system that has a limited storage capacity. After around 18 seconds memory in STM that is not rehearsed (the processess of doing something so that the information can be retained in memory. Eg repetition) has fleeted. Miller found that the average capacity of STM was 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information but can be improved by chunking. (Separate peices of information combiined) The information is chunked according to meaning, they can take any form, words, images or phrases. If the infomration in STM is not rehearsed of rehersal is interupted the information disapears, and can never be reterned again. Most forgetting occurs due to faliure to encode, meaning that the information had never been placed in LTM. To be encoded in Long Term Mermory (LTM) (The relatively permanent memory system that holds vast amounts of information for a long period of time) the information must be meaningfull of rehearsed. Once it is encoded the information must be consoltiadated, and without it, information is lost.
Many psychologists belive that LTM has several types and levels each of which is specialised for different types of knowledge. Procedual memory enables indidivudal to preform certain skills such as typing, tieing shoes, and driving while declaritive memory is used to store facts which is then further divided...