Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

Forgetting249Average percentage of information retained100%908070605040302010Rapid forgetting of someinformation relatively soonafter Ebbinghaus learnedthe nonsense syllablesVery little memory loss of theremaining information overthe course of the followingseveral weeksFigure 6.8 The Ebbinghaus ForgettingCurve Ebbinghaus’s research demonstratedthe basic pattern of forgetting: relativelyrapid loss of some information, followedby stable memories of the remaininginformation.Source: Adapted from Ebbinghaus (1885).020mins1hour8hours24hours2days6days31daysInterval between original learningof nonsense syllables and memory testWhy Do We Forget?Ebbinghaus was a pioneer in the study of memory. His major contribution was toidentify the basic pattern of forgetting: rapid forgetting of some information relativelysoon after the original learning, followed by stability of the memories that remain.But what causes forgetting? Psychologists have identified several factors thatcontribute to forgetting, including encoding failure, decay, interference, and motivatedforgetting.Encoding FailureIt Never Got to Long-Term MemoryWithout rummaging through your loose change, take a look at Figure 6.9. Circlethe drawing that accurately depicts the face of a U.S. penny. Now, check your answeragainst a real penny. Were you correct?When this task was presented to participants in one study, fewer than half of thempicked the correct drawing (Nickerson & Adams, 1982). The explanation? Unlessyou’re a coin collector, you’ve probably never looked carefully at a penny. Eventhough you may have handled thousands of pennies, chances are that you’ve encodedonly the most superficial characteristics of a penny—its size, color, and texture—intoyour long-term memory.In a follow-up study, William Marmie and Alice Healy (2004) allowed participantsto study an unfamiliar coin for short periods of time, ranging from 15 secondsto 60 seconds. Even with only 15 seconds devoted to focusing on thecoin’s appearance, participants were better able to remember the details ofthe unfamiliar coin than the all-too-familiar penny. In effect, Marmie andHealy (2004) confirmed that lack of attention at the time of encoding wasresponsible for the failure to accurately remember the appearance of apenny.As these simple demonstrations illustrate, one of the most common reasonsfor forgetting is called encoding failure—we never encoded the informationinto long-term memory in the first place. Encoding failure explains why youforget a person’s name two minutes after being introduced to her: The informationwas momentarily present in your short-term memory, but was neverencoded into long-term memory.Figure 6.9 Test for Memory of Detailsof a Common Object Which of thesedrawings is an accurate picture of a realpenny?A B C D EF G H I JK L M N O