Lesson 2: Thinking and Memory
9 - Problems with Thinking
Forgetting: Forgetting has usually been viewed as a more complex, less easily understood phenomenon than remembering. Forgetting is an active process; it is not a passive one where we are simply the helpless victims of memory loss. For example, you forget the time you kicked a soccer ball into a big table full of food at the family picnic. Memory not only reproduces what has been stored, but it also produces information on its own, which means that memory changes some of the data when it is brought out of storage.
What causes forgetting to occur? First, forgetting is part of the normal memory system. It is nature’s defense against a bombardment of too much information. When the necessary cues or stimuli required to recall the data are not supplied, the memory remains lost. This does not mean that the information is permanently erased–just that it will remain dormant until a very powerful stimulus can be used to activate memory. Sometimes forgotten material may sink to unconscious levels, causing emotional conflicts for the individual. For example, if a young child is molested, that awful memory may be forgotten for many years. Occasionally, certain types of brain surgery must be performed with the patient conscious but under partial anaesthetic. When certain areas of the brain are touched with surgical instruments, long forgotten memories are recalled by the patient.
Learning a new piece of information is difficult. To forget some of the information we have learned in the past is disheartening. These factors will have an impact on the forgetting process.
Inattention: In some cases people do not give full attention to the learning situation in the initial stages. The information is not properly anchored in the short-term memory to enable it to move into long-term memory. Therefore, because of inattention, they never learn the material properly in the first place. In the final analysis, the quality of the original learning can never be underestimated in promoting learning and detaining forgetting.
Retroactive inhibition: What we have just learned may interfere with previous learning. Retroactive inhibition seems to cause the greatest interference when new learning is very similar to the original learning. Because the pieces of information are so much the same, they get mixed together. For example, you are memorizing a grocery list for this week, and once that is complete, you decide to memorize one for next week. You may have difficulty recalling the items from the first week by themselves if there is some overlap between the two lists.
Proactive inhibition: Previous learning may interfere with new learning. The sequence of interference is reversed from that of retroactive inhibition. The main idea in this theory is that the original learning is so powerfully fixed in the mind that new data is less easily assimilated. For example, in English a certain letter such as ‘j” has a particular sound. Then you study Spanish and find that the sound of ‘j’ is quite different. You may make many mistakes because your instruction in English dominantes what you are trying to learn in Spanish.
Motivated forgetting: Motivation to complete unfinished work has been well documented. In one experiment a group of subjects was asked to work on a number of simple tasks. Some tasks they were allowed to finish, others were interrupted by the experimenter before the final stages. Later, the subjects were asked to remember the tasks they were doing. Surprisingly, they remembered more of the unfinished tasks. What is the reason? One explanation is that an individual becomes involved in a taskand creates motivation to complete the task at hand. The memory is sharpened by the motivation (and frustration) of knowing something was left undone that the subject wishes another chance to do. The Zeigarnik effect is the theory that incompleted tasks are remembered longer than completed tasks. They nag at our mind until we get them done.
A later experiment cast some new light on incompleted tasks. Subjects were given a number of tasks, some especially difficult, which invariably gave them trouble and led to some anxiety. Subjects were interrupted part way through the difficult tasks. Later, when asked to list the tasks they were doing, the subjects remembered less of the difficult ones because these tasks had caused anxiety and the subjects had little hope of completing them successfully anyway. In more general terms, if material to be learned is associated with failure at a task, the ability to recall information is reduced. By the same token, success at a task increases the ability to recall information.