Analyzing The Primary Cause Of Forgetting

During an average lifetime, one can expect to have at least occasional memory lapses from time to time. Usually it's something as simple as forgetting what you just did a few minutes ago, forgetting if you turned the stove off, or if you left your keys on the table or in the bathroom counter. Such lapses are relatively normal, but when they become a recurring theme, it's a more serious problem.

The stage of skill acquisition in which a skill no longer relies on conscious effort is the:

About three months ago, during the summer, I was living a very unhealthy lifetsyle. For about a week I felt like I wasn't remembering things that should have been easily known. During normal daily activites such as work, I would tend to forget things that would have been easy to remember any other day. I've been working as a deilvry driver at a pizzeria now for close to 2 years, and I know the neighborhood extremly well. However, during this time, I was starting to forget items at the pizzeria such as sodas or where streets were, that I knew extremly well. It is for these reasons that I feel like I was experiecing symptoms of disaciative amnesia

Verbal short term memories encode and represent information in a phonological form in immediate memory. This was highly supported by Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) working memory model. Baddeley and Hitch introduce the “phonological (articulatory) loop”, a mechanism in the short term memory which helps in the retention of verbal information temporarily. (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). As these mechanisms are heavily dependent on the phonological systems, they have brought about inefficiencies in memory encoding bringing about various effects which includes phonological similarity effect ( difficulty in recall due to similar sounding words), word length effect (recall to be more difficult with long words than short words), the unattended speech effect

In order to understand why, I need to understand how. How are memories retrieved or, in my case, forgotten? As I explained earlier, long-term memories are stored in the cerebral cortex of the brain while the short-term memories, as long as they’re repeated and not replaced with new memories, are retained in the prefrontal cortex. In order to use these memories, there has to be a process to retrieve them because it’s impossible to use something that you don’t have. In order to recall memories, they need to be actively encoded into our working memory, meaning that they need to be copied from specific storage locations into the working memory where they can be used. The more these memories have been encoded and structured, the easier they are to retrieve. The retrieval of information is divided into two subcategories which are recall and recognition. Recall, or actively constructing the information, requires the activation of all neurons which are involved in the memory. With recognition, or the determination of whether you have encountered something before, if a part of an object activates a piece of the neural network concerned, it may be enough to activate the entire neural network (Dubuc, 2002). When you encode a memory, the hippocampus, a central part of the brain involved in memory function, takes a snapshot which is preserved in a set of neurons which can be activated later, says Kenneth

Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keep things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you! Foul Ball, p. 35.

The connection I found was to the essay "The Great Forgetting". "The Great Forgetting" was about how relying on automation systems will cause people to lose the skills to properly use it in case of a malfunction, and people rely too heavily on it. For example, flying a plane on autopilot is great and advances technology, but if something goes wrong, the pilot needs to know how to manually fly the plane to a safe landing. This is like the essay "Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene" because in both of these essays states the truth that people rely too much on other things and people. In the case of the "The Great Forgetting", people relied on automatic systems to do their work for them. While in the essay "Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene",

The purpose of this experiment is to demonstrate that people can forget what they have just previously remembered. People are more likely to recall a stimulus correctly if the context is the same as previously presented; people are more likely to forget if the context is different. Participants were St. Francis Xavier University undergraduate students in Cognitive Psychology. There were three different phases of the experiment; Phase I: a series of 44 word-pairs was presented. Participants read the words silently; Phase II (cued-recall): a cue-recall test was imposed. Participants were to recall a word that matched the cue presented; Phase III (memory judgment): a cue and parget-pair were displayed. Participants were to remember whether they had recalled the target previously in Phase II. It was found that there is a statistically highly significant difference between conditions “same” and “different”, F(1,46) = 139.7, p < .001, indicating that our memories are often contingent upon context.

The general argument made by the AVID Center in their work, “The Curve of Forgetting”, is that if you review the material you’ve learned within 24 hours everyday, it will be hard to forget the information because of how much you’ve reviewed it. More specifically, the AVID Center argues that our brains are not reliable to keep information of a certain lecture you learned that day because our brain collects so much unnecessary information, it dumps the important information along with the unimportant. They write,” Our brains are constantly recording information on a temporary basis... Because the information isn't necessary and it doesn't come up again, our brains dump it all off, along with what was learned in the lecture... Within 24 hours of getting the information-spend 10 minutes reviewing and you will raise the curve almost to 100% again...

Remembering can be a dangerous thing. Especially if there is something else that needs to be done, other things that has to be processed to remember it again. Remembering was a lot like seasons. When one comes the other goes away, and though it was once there it is not now. It has been eaten away taken away by the new season or the new moment.

When the recent focus is mainly on studying memory decline that is caused by diseases, memory decline that occurs with normal aging is being disregarded. According to Daselaar and Cabeza, it is important to confine between normal age-related memory decline and the one that is caused by a disease, such as Alzheimer’s, so the person can be provided with the proper treatment at the right time (Daselaar and Cabeza 2008, 577). In my point of view, the main focus of these studies should be on episodic memory, because it is affected the most by aging in comparison to other long-term memory components such as semantic and implicit memory. Denice C. Park and her coworkers have shown in their research (2002) that as verbal knowledge increases across the life span, processing-intensive tasks start to decline since we are on our 20’s. These include for example long term memory, speed of processing, and short term memory; with long-term memory being significantly the most responsive to decline. Since long-term memory has been found to be the most sensitive to age-related cognitive changes, the onset time of this decline has been studied

There are many ways that affect the memory retention. Seeing something may cause you to think back to that memory like getting shots. If you got a shot and it really hurt when you got it every time you see a needle then you remember that time when you got that bad stick. Try not to associate a bad memory with a bad experience you had, try to think about the good experiences you had, that will cause you not to associate the bad experience to whatever bad experience you had. There are also things that you can do to help you with your memory like getting enough sleep when you don't get a goodnight's rest you tend to forget some things. It is important to keep your brain active so playing some brain games will allow you to remember some things. Doing puzzles and crossword puzzles will keep your brain active also.

The author of this article hypothesized that, as individuals grow older memory retention declines, however, not all characteristics of memory are weakened. This article is made up of three sections; Review of Empirical Findings, Aging and Memory: Theoretical Perspectives, and Aging and Memory: Neuropsychological Underpinnings. The first section will inform the reader by using examples that were used to study different parts of memory and conclusions that the researchers have agreed

This is where retrieval cues come in. For example: when you make an account online, you must set up a password and on top of that, you have set some sort of hints just in case you might forget. Retrieval cues is that. It is details or hints that help you trace back to your memory recollection and select the appropriate one and bring it back. Retrieval failure can occur from interfering like certain memories get in the way. Interferences can be either proactive or retroactive where the old memory blocking the learning of new memory or vice versa. Last but not least, some memories we forgotten because we do it purposely to keep it out of our mind. The reason to that is because it associated with pain and hardship. A good example of this is your first break up. After spending a tremendous amount of time or exquisite bonding. You and your significant broke up and that left a huge scar on you. You told yourself to keep it out of your mind as it will be too painful for you to ever remember it again. Eventually this memory will be suppressed to point where it will be difficult to

Short-term retention of a single word relies on retrieval from long-term memory when both rehearsal and refreshing are disrupted