Memory Implications Of Memory

Forgetting was first studied by Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) who through producing a retrieval curve suggested that forgetting function is logarithmic as memories fade over time just like Dewar et al., (2010 p.185) has stated that “events fade away as soon as they are no longer the focus of our attention” therefore causing forgetting. Following researchers like Tulving (1974, p.74) looked at the concepts of forgetting as well as reasons why we forget and defined forgetting as the inability to recall something that could be recalled on an earlier occasion” however it is not a failure to encode as the information was never internalised, memory must have been formed first for it to be forgotten. It is suggested that biologically we may view memory as a change in connectivity between neurons, feasibly because the connections degrade resulting in the memory being lost and unavailable which is why Bailey and Chen (1989) examined the unavailability using aplysia (sea slugs) and found that new neural connections are formed following learning, however these connections degrade over time and the extent of degradation was associated with forgetting. These findings however still did not answer the question of whether forgotten memories become unavailable as such neural degradation was only shown in simple organisms but not in humans. Further findings suggest that memory exists but the issue is in accessing that memory due to an inability to retrieve a cue that has not been presented. A cue is needed in order to retrieve memory as in the absence of that cue, we cannot disprove the inaccessibility account of forgetting as retrieval is only determined by whether the information held in memory matches the information available in retrieval, for an exa...

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...s, therefore for future researchers to be able to demonstrate unavailability, researchers would need to see all neural connectivity pre-learning and post-learning (i.e. the change in isolation of all other changes or learning) plus the deprivation of that specific connection post-forgetting of which would be difficult to demonstrate therefore we cannot universally say that forgetting is due to unavailability as forgotten memories can be later recalled. Furthermore, further research on the topic is still required as it is difficult to broadly state if passage of time causes forgetting as decay in memory occurs if the information is not rehearsed well or if it is not stored in memory, besides it could be due to the place of retrieval not being the same place the information was first learnt at (Godden & Baddeley, 1975; Goodwin et al., 1969; Miles and Hardman, 1997).