Made by Au šrinė Adomaitytė
Psbns9-01

The importance of forgetting
The first attempts to study forgetting
The reasons why we forget
Proactive and Retroactive Interference
Memory Dysfunctions
Sufferings in having perfect memory
Ways to improve memory
Conclusion
References

Forgetting helps us avoid being burdened and distracted by trivial stores of meaningless data.
Forgetting permits us to form general impressions and recollections.
Forgetting unnecessary information is as essential to the proper functioning of memory as is remembering more important material.

Memorizing lists of nonsense syllables such as
BAZ, JIH, FUB, YOX, SUJ, XIR, DAX, LEC,
VUM, PID, KEL, WAV, TUV, ZOF, GEK, HIV.

A failure of encoding
The reason for memory failure is that people probably never encode the information into long-term memory initially.

Decay is the loss of information through nonuse.
Memory trace: A physical change in the brain that occurs when material is learned.
Interference : The phenomenon by which information in memory disrupts the recall of other information.
Cue-dependent forgetting: Forgetting that occurs when there are insufficient retrieval cues to rekindle information that is in memory.

Proactive interference: Interference in which information learned earlier disrupts the recall of newer material.
Retroactive interference: Interference in which there is difficulty in the recall of information learned earlier because of later exposure to different material.

Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease: An illness characterized in part by severe memory problems.
Alzheimer’s results from an inherited susceptibility to a defect in the production of the protein beta amyloid, which is necessary for the maintenance of nerve cell connections.

Amnesia
Amnesia: Memory loss that occurs without other mental difficulties.
Retrograde amnesia: Amnesia in which memory is lost for occurrences prior to a certain event.
Anterograde amnesia: Amnesia in which memory is lost for events that follow an injury.
Korsakoff’s syndrome: A disease that afflicts longterm alcoholics, leaving some abilities intact, but including hallucinations and a tendency to repeat the same story.

The case of man who had total recall: He could memorize lists of fifty unrelated words and recall them at will more than a decade later or he could even repeat the same list of words backward.
Such skill presented quite a problem:
Eventually he was not able to relax
Reading became difficult since every word evoke a flood of thoughts from the past that interfered with his ability to understand the meaning of what he was reading.
Psychologist A. R. Luria, who studied hid case, found him to be a “disorganised and rather dull-witted person”

The key word technique
Encoding specificity
Organization cues
Effective note taking
Practice and rehearsal
Don’t believe claims about drugs that improve memory

Memory plays a very important role in every human’s life as it helps to identify people, recognize places, operate with information, recall events and many other. Loosing memory is very painful not only for that person but also for everyone around.

Information was taken on February 15th
Robert Feldman.
“Understanding Psychology”, New York
(N.Y.) : McGraw-Hill, 2008 http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/levitin/pubspages/memory.html
http://education.calumet.purdue.edu/vockell/EdPsyBook/Edp sy6/edpsy6_forgetting.htm
http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_wade_psychology_8/30/7716/19
75511.cw/content/index.html
http://www.gloriajean.org/main/005_About_Alzheimer's.cfm

All pictures were picked on February 15th http://img2.timeinc.net/health/images/slides/fibro-slidememory-400x400.jpg
http://www.squarecirclez.com/blog/wpcontent/uploads/2009/04/ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve.gif
http://www.dcity.org/braingames/pennies/coinBW.gif
http://education.calumet.purdue.edu/vockell/EdPsyBook/Edp sy6/Fig6_2.gif
http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/1929/1975415/f0
7_p251.gif
http://www.gloriajean.org/images/pet_scans.jpg
http://system2.ipressroom.com/portal/ut/artwork/7/5/6/6/1/75
661/notes.memory_2-prv.jpg