A brief intro to Forgetting and its theories

1. According to Munn (1967) “Forgetting is the loss, temporary or
Permanent, of the ability to recall or recognize something learnt
Earlier.”
According to Drever (1952) “Forgetting means failure at any time
To recall an experience, when attempting to do so, or to perform an
Action previously learnt .

2. Types of Forgetting
NATURAL FORGETTING
MORBID or ABNORMAL FORGETTING
GENERAL FORGETTING
SPECIFIC FORGETTING
PHYSICAL FORGETTING
PSYCHOLOGICAL FORGETTING

3. Theories of Forgetting
 Theories of forgetting can be difficult to test as
we may in fact not forget, but have trouble
retrieving information from storage.
 Therefore it is possible that these theories can
explain why we are unable to retrieve a
memory or why it is distorted.

4. Theories of Forgetting
 Two factors involved in forgetting:
 Accessibility: The information available can be
accessed at a specific time/place.
 Availability: The information is represented in
the memory.

5. Theories of Forgetting
Freud: Repression, conscious process of
burying memories to protect ego.
The emotions associated with the repressed
memory may be recovered, or express
themselves through:
Dream Analysis.
Hypnosis.
Free Association.

6. Theories of Forgetting
TRACE DECAY THEORY
Natural forgetting which takes place due to
the decay of memory traces in the brain and
due to time.
Criticism – does not explain why we dont
forget how to ride a bicycle.

8. WHY FORGETTING TAKES PLACE
Forgetting in STM.
 Trace Decay: Unless
information is refreshed or
rehearsed will
spontaneously fade or
decay over time.
 Displacement: Only a
fixed number of slots in
memory capacity. New
information will displace
old when capacity is
reached.
 Encoding failure:
Because of displacement,
this information never
reaches the LTM.

9. Forgetting in LTM.
 Interference: More information
will be stored and become
confused together.
 Retrieval Failure: Information
may be available but
temporarily inaccessible
 Motivated forgetting: we may
actively work to forget
memories. Two basic forms are
 suppression- a conscious form
of forgetting.
 Repression- and unconscious
form of forgetting .