Lecture 19 - Incidental Forgetting Flashcards
(23 cards)
What is the difference between incidental and motivated forgetting?
- Incidental forgetting happens without conscious intention
- Motivated forgeting involves deliberate suppression or avoidance of memories
What did Parker et al (2006) find about Jill Price (AJ)?
AJ remembers every day of her life since her teens in vivid detail (hyperthymesia), but describes it as emotionally tormenting and intrusive
What did Ebbinghaus (1913) discover about forgetting over time?
Firgeting follows a logarithmic curve - rapid at first, then slows - with nonsense syllables
What did Meeter et al. (2005) find about public event memory?
- Recalled dropped from 60% to 30% in the first year, then declined slowly
- Recognition was better than recall (52% vs 31%)
What is Tulving’s distinction between availability and accessibility?
- Availability = whether the item is in memory
- Accessibility = whether it can be retrieved
- Forgetting may involve loss of either or both
Does failed recall or recognition confir permanent memory loss?
- No, as failure may be due to poor cues rather than unavailability
- Only when both fail consistently can memory be considered forgotten
What causes interference in memory retrieval?
Interference occurs when a retrieval cue is linked to multiple memories, causing competition and confusion
What is the competition assumption (Anderson et al., 1994)?
A cue activates all related traces; these compete for retrieval, reducing access to the target memory
What is the cue-overload principle?
The more items linked to a cue, the harder each is to recall due to overload and competition
What is retroactive interference (RI)?
New learning impairs recall of older memories e.g., learning list b harms recall of list a
What did Barnes & Underwood (1959) show about RI?
Greater training on a second list leads to worse recall of the first, due to increased interference
What did Baddeley & Hitch (1977) find in rugby players?
Forgetting correlated with the number of intervening games (not time), showing interference, not decay
What is proactive interference (PI)?
Older memories interfere with learning or recalling newer information e.g., list a harms learning or recall of list b
What did Underwood (1957) show about PI?
PI affects recall more than recognition, especially when prior learning is strong
What is retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF)?
Practicing retrieval of some items (e.g., orange) can suppress related ones (e.g., banana) within the same category
What did Anderson et al (1994) find using the Retrieval Practice Paradigm?
Practiced items are better recalled, while related unpracticed items are worse recalled, demonstrating RIF
How does RIF appear in real-world contexts?
In revision (Macrae & MacLeod, 1999), exams (Carroll et al., 2007), and witness interrogation (Shaw et al., 1995), where retrieval of some info harms recall of related info
What is associative blocking?
A cue retrieves a stronger competitor instead of the target (e.g., fruit -> orange blocks banana), reinforcing the competitor through repeated retrieval
What did Smith & Tindell (1997) find about blocking?
Participants solved puzzles worse (33%) when solutions resembled previously encoded words (e.g., A_L_GY related to ANALOGY) vs unrelated puzzles (50%)
What is inhibition in memory retrieval?
Inhibition reduces activation of an inappropriate response (e.g., suppressing banana to recall orange), making it harder to retrieve later
What does inhibiiton theory say about cue-independence?
Inhibition causes general retrieval difficulty across different cues (e.g., monkey-b______), unlike blocking, which is cue-dependent (Anderson, 2003)
What are the key reasons we forget?
- Trace decay (fading over time)
- Interference (retroactive and proactive)
- Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF)
- Memory can become unavailable (lost) or inaccessible (temporarily unretrievable)
What mechanisms explain interference?
- Blocking (stronger competitors dominate retrieval)
- Inhibition (competing responses are actively suppressed
