Forgetting is a Disease of the Age: Theories of its Interpretation in Psychology

You walk two steps, your doubts increase, and you try to remember, but you fail. You go back to make sure, and you are surprised by your continuous forgetting of many things. This short story is almost repeated to us daily, with different things and events that we forget.

Forgetfulness is a disease of the age, and the theories of its interpretation in psychology are the subject of our article today.

What are the stages of memory?

Before we start talking about forgetting, we must know how information and experiences enter our minds and why we keep some of them and forget others. The study of memory today is part of the study of cognitive psychology, as it looks at the mental processes that involve storing and retrieving information from memory.

A person receives a lot of information daily, processes it in stages, keeps it, then withdraws it from their memory when they need it, and memory goes through the following stages:

1. A person acquires information, as memory starts with sensory input from the environment and remains for several seconds in a sensory record linked to sensory channels, and the transmission of this information stops at the next stage, “our attention to it”; A lot of information passes through us, but we don't transmit it all and we don't keep it all. For example, the visual sensory record keeps the information for a second and the auditory record for five seconds, and if the information is not transmitted during this period, we will lose it.
2. The information that captured our attention then passes from the sensory register to the short-term memory store. Information is kept in this store for a period ranging from 20 to 30 seconds, and this period varies depending on several factors. The capacity of this memory for storage is also small, as it accommodates about seven items together, and a large part of the information is displaced and forgotten due to the arrival of new information.
3. The processing of information in the short-term memory store is reviewed by repetition or by associating it with previous information in order to move to the next stage.
4. The processed information is then transferred to the long-term memory store. It is organized into categories, and the information remains in the long-term memory store for a long period of time—months, years, or a lifetime.

It is worth noting that information that does not go through these stages is forgotten. For example, when you ask someone for their phone number, they directly withdraw their number from their long-term memory, as this number is in the store of this person and not in yours, and when you take this number, you put it in the sensory entrance, and if you do not process this information—that is, the number—by repeating it and using it permanently, you will forget it after you hear it.

What is the "on the tip of the tongue" phenomenon?

"On the tip of my tongue." How many times have you said this phrase while trying to remember the name of a person, song, artist, or even a home address? We search in our memory, and this search is not done randomly. Suppose you are searching for the name Dave, for example, and you think of, for example, Jake or Jade. You are trying to retrieve information from your long-term memory according to a specific system:

1. Pronunciate the word you are trying to remember.
2. Begin with the same letter.
3. Have the same word's meaning.
4. Have the same number of syllables.

When this phenomenon occurs, we know fully that the information we want to retrieve is with us, but we feel that it is on the tip of our tongue and we cannot pronounce it. In fact, while trying to remember, we feel a bit of tension, and as soon as we remember the information or someone helps us say it, we feel comfortable as if it were a weight that has been removed from our backs.

This phenomenon, which is often a temporary forgetting of information, occurs when:

1. We are tired.
2. There are overlapping memories that affect how well we encode information in the first place.

Repeating this phenomenon with you always means that you did not consolidate the information in your mind and did not process it well, and this means that you have to focus on repeating it, especially if you are in advance of an exam or a job interview.

Theories of explaining forgetfulness in psychology

Forgetting is a person's inability to retrieve previous information, ideas, events, or actions.

Forgetting, then, is not a true loss of information; Rather, it is a failure to retrieve this information from one part of the long-term memory.

The most important question remains: why do we forget? Why do we lose our ability to retrieve a name, a number, or even information we learned, as happens before exams, for example?

Psychology was interested in explaining forgetfulness and presented a number of theories for this purpose, and we will talk about them in the following:

1. Vanishing Theory

This is one of the simplest theories to explain forgetfulness. This is because it links forgetting to time. That is, we lose information over time. For example, if you have not used a program or application for a long time, you will find it very difficult to remember the steps to use it, and if you have not seen a person for a very long time, you are likely to forget their name when you meet them. But if you learned to swim as a child, will you forget it as an adult?

Most scholars believe that this explanation for forgetting suffers from difficulties that make the vanishing theory difficult to accept. For example, this theory does not distinguish between the existence of information primarily in memory and the difficulty of accessing it, nor is it able to explain why we remember only events from childhood, nor is it able to explain spontaneous retrieval, as if we forget a number or a name and then suddenly remember it.

2. Intercalation Theory

This theory is based on a basic principle: It is the positive or negative effect that learning a task has on learning another task, and this is what happens with regard to our memories that overlap with each other. What we learned in the past affects what we will learn in the future, and what we will learn in the future will also have an impact on our previous information.

Information in our long-term memory overlaps and mixes with recent information, which sometimes causes distortion or memory failure. For example, I may ask you about your memories in the second week of your employment, and you will notice difficulty remembering the events of that day. This is because many events have passed after it, so forgetting, according to this theory, occurs because memories overlap with each other and disrupt each other.

As we mentioned, previous information may affect recent information, and this is called "proactive interference." For example, it may be difficult for us to memorize new information because of something that we memorized earlier. For example, it would be difficult for us to learn French because we had learned English in the past.

Retrospective interference may occur, which is the opposite of anticipatory interference, in which we are unable to remember previous information due to new information.

The first day of work, the first day of college, the day of your wedding, and other important events in your life are fortified more than others. Thus, they are less susceptible to interference. Therefore, you always find it easy to retrieve them. As for transient events, such as locking the door, they may be more susceptible to interference and forgetting than others.

3. Retrieval Theory

Information, as we mentioned more than once, is not erased from our memory. It is only that we are unable to reach it due to the absence of stimuli and influences that help us reach it, and this is what this theory says.

When we talked about long-term memory and the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, we said that the information is organized and arranged in long-term memory, and cues, influences, and keywords help us retrieve this information. How many times have you remembered many events once you smelled a scent or heard a specific song?

In the event that these stimuli cannot reach the specific part of long-term memory and if the information is not recognized when it is stimulated, we fail to retrieve it, and forgetting occurs.

4. Suppression Theory

This theory of forgetting goes back to Freud, and Freud assumes that there are many thoughts and events associated with a person's previous desires, repressed feelings, punished actions, or painful events that are excluded from feeling because they cannot be expressed or remembered except in special circumstances.

These events and memories are not erased from memory; they are only excluded. That is, the person has transferred them of their own free will from the conscious to the unconscious. This is because they are associated with painful feelings and harsh experiences, so they deliberately forget them. Many studies have indicated that people remember good events more than bad ones.

Also, an example of this theory can be given by students who remember a subject because they like it while forgetting material they do not like.

In conclusion

The nature of modern life today, which imposes many pressures on human life, has greatly contributed to the transformation of forgetfulness into a global and widespread phenomenon, and although many theories have tried to explain its occurrence, we have not yet reached accurate explanations and clear answers about our forgetting of things and our recollection of others.

On the other hand, forgetfulness is often a blessing for a person, as none of us desires to remain trapped in our memories, our past, or our painful experiences. Rather,we find ourselves seeking, with all our might, to forget.