1. Forgetting

2. Encoding Failure

3. Encoding Failure We fail to encode the information.
It never has a chance to enter our LTM.

4. Storage Decay Even if we encode something well, we can forget it.
Without rehearsal, we forget things over time.
Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve.

5. Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve

6. Retrieval Failure
The memory was encoded and stored, but sometimes you just cannot access the memory.

7. Types of Retrieval Failure
Proactive Interference
The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.
If you call your new girlfriend your old girlfriend’s name.

8. Types of Retrieval Failure
Retroactive Interference
The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.
When you finally remember this year’s locker combination, you forget last year’s.

9. Motivated Forgetting We sometimes revise our own histories.
Honey, I did stick to my diet today!!!!!!

10. Motivated Forgetting One explanation is REPRESSION:
Why does it exist?
One explanation is REPRESSION:
in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings and memories from consciousness.

11. Forgetting

12. Improving memory Study repeatedly – spacing effect
Make the material meaningful
Activate retrieval cues
Use mnemonic devices
Minimize interference
Sleep more
Test your own knowledge

13. Memory Construction
We sometimes alter our memories as we encode or retrieve them.
Your expectations, schemas, environment may alter your memories.

14. Misinformation Effect
Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.

15. Misinformation Effect
Depiction of Accident

16. Misinformation Effect
Leading Question: About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?

17. Source Amnesia (Source Attribution)
Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about or imagined.