Underlying Explanations for Forgetfulness

860 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How do family dynamics affect child development

The human brain has the ability to store and recall infinite amounts of information from previously learned actions, and instructions to newly learned data, and thought’s. So why is it, that human memory is faulty? There are many theories as to why certain memories are easily forgotten and others are engrained so deeply that it takes no energy at all to have the information recalled. Regardless, humans begin to learn as well as forget information from the time of birth till we are laid to rest. Early childhood memories are just one set of memories many tend to forget. Other factors that contribute to a lack of memory can include negative thinking, decay, encoding failure and interference, mental illness, and trauma.
Memories from early childhood, before the age of 7, are just one set of memories many have difficulty recalling. “…rapid growth of cells in the brain’s memory hub in the first years of life means that key connections between existing cells are broken. As a result, memories stored there become impossible to retrieve” (MacRae 63). When many are asked to recall early childhood memories they are unable to do so. Pictures can be used to stimulate the memory but it is usually the adult that was present during the child’s young years that tells the story relating to the picture. “Autobiographical narrative skill develops significantly over the next 4 to 5 years, such that by the time children are 6 to 7 years of age, they tell relatively complete narratives about personal events, even when talking with unfamiliar adults who do not provide content and do little to help structure the reports” (Bauer & Larkina 1). Children between 2 to 5 years of age have a higher tendency to need help telling a story and speaking t...

... middle of paper ...

... process lose some memories in the process of gaining new

References
Bauer, P. J., & Larkina, M. (2013. August 12). Childhood Amnesia in the Making: Different Distributions of Autobiographical Memories in Children and Adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0033307
Cherry, K. (n.d.). Explanations for Forgetting: Reasons Why We Forget. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivespsychology/tp/explanations-for-forgetting.htm
MacRae, F. (2013. May 25). Why we can’t remember the early days of our childhood. Daily Mail. p63.
Rathus, S. A. (2012) PSYCH. Second Edition. Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. 140-161.
Wixted, J.T. (2005, February). A Theory About Why We Forget What We Once Knew. Current Directions in Psychological Science (Wiley-Blackwell). 14 (1), 6-9. doi: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00324.x

Show More
Related

  • Childhood Memories In The Glass Castle

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    When the topic of childhood memory pops up in a conversation the listeners would think the story teller is telling the truth right? Well, what if I said that the people telling the stories might not even know if they aren’t? When these stories are told most don’t realize the little bit of memory actually involved. So how much or it is true and how much it came from another inaccurate place? Where could something like that come from? Were Jennette Walls’ memories real? Does this affect you or is it not a big dilemma? Should these be considered There are several different debates within itself but the main one to focus on is are your memories even your memories?

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Great Forgetting

    1101 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ohlson starts the article with a question. Asking why we do not remember anything from our childhood in an artistic manner. “Our first three years are usually a blur and we don’t remember much before

    Read More

  • What are Flashbulb Memories?

    1451 Words  | 3 Pages

    Winograd, E., & Killinger, W. A. (1983). Relating age at encoding in early childhood to adult recall: Development of flashbulb memories. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: General, 112(3), 413-422. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.112.3.413

    Read More

  • Memory Is a Reconstruction: Myth or Truth?

    1236 Words  | 3 Pages

    This would help us in understanding the reconstructive aspect of memory further. Thereupon conscious efforts could be taken to reduce false memories in individuals suffering from psychological disorders. As some disorders are usually a result of misinterpretation of events in life due to perverted inner beliefs or fears, this can be an appropriate intervention . Classically, it is true for adult reconstruction of childhood abuse and trauma which is widely studied. The research shows that these sort of memories are often distorted and self created, with no relevance to reality.

    Read More

  • The Effect of Full House on My Life

    2474 Words  | 5 Pages

    When I look back at my childhood, I see it as a highly colored, exaggerated version of what it must have been. Everything seems brighter, and bigger than reality allows. It’s the ideal “child’s world,” full of Barbies, dress-up, and playgrounds. But, if I try hard enough, I can remember the feeling of being there. The feeling of being small, and nearly innocent. Most of the time when I think of my childhood, I look back on two specific years, kindergarten and first grade, and the summers before and after the two. Both of these took place in Schaumburg, Illinois, in a two-bedroom town-home that I still call “my old house” even though it’s not that anymore. I’m not sure if these are the years I simply remember the best, or if that was actually the time I felt most like a child. I had many friends, and we had plenty of time to play games and use our imaginations. Nevertheless, I don’t usually reminisce about the shows and movies that I used to watch, and certainly not how these things affected me growing up. When prompted, however, I can remember specifics. I even begin to see how visual texts, like The Little Mermaid and Full House, have influenced me throughout my life and especially in my childhood. I have felt the impact of these things in my life as recently as this year, and I can see not only how the shows I watched influenced my behavior, but also that I chose to watch shows and movies that I thought were representative of me.

    Read More

  • Memory Stages In Psychology Essay

    628 Words  | 2 Pages

    Once we have learned something I believe that we will always remember it, we may forget about it at a certain time, but if we ever came across the information again, it will be retrieved from our long term memory. Just because we do not use all the information we learn it is still stored in your memory, so in all actuality we never really forget anything. If information isn’t stored in our memory then learning would be pointless.

    Read More

  • The Effects of Emotion on Children’s Eyewitness Testimony

    1869 Words  | 4 Pages

    Children are extremely susceptible to recalling false memories due to suggestive questioning (Quas et al., 1999). Therefore, it is very important that the most accurate testimony is retrieved from the child, and this can be done through emotional focusing. It has been found that emotional focusing increases autobiographical memory, meaning that the more emotionally focused the child is, the better they remember events from their own life (Drummond, Dritschel, Astell, O’Carroll, & Dalgleish 2006). In one study, children were taken to a pretend zoo and reminisced about their experience two days later. They found that children who reminisced about emotions recalled more information about the tr...

    Read More

  • Repressed Memories

    3889 Words  | 8 Pages

    Farrants, J. (1998, September). The 'false' memory debate. Counseling Psychology Quarterly. Retrieved September 14, 2000 from ProQuest database (Bell & Howell Information and Learning-ProQuest) on the World Wide Web: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb

    Read More

  • Memory

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    Children’s memories are easier to confuse as those of adults. For many years most adults believed that children’s memories could not be trusted because children tend to confuse reality with their fantasies. Children just as adults can be accurate in what they report and they also like adult can distort, forget, fantasize, and be misled. As research show, their memories processes are only human. All I know is that I wouldn’t like to be accused by a group of children or students. It’s not quite as reliable as you may have hoped a memory would be.

    Read More

  • What´s Eidetic Memory?

    966 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...tumps them and studies and research is still being conducted in order to gain more insight into this quizzical case. But in order to understand the correlation between age and eidetic memory, one can look at the causes as three different theories. The first theory is the Linguistic theory, the idea that as children mature, their language skills help them perceive information. The second theory is one dealing with functionalism. The idea is that over time, the child’s brain learns to retain only significant bits of information and discard unnecessary ones. And the last theory deals with association. As one matures, one learns to associate their different senses in order to process information. In all, each theory takes credence, because one provides a thoughtful and logical explanation as to why children rely less and less on visual imagery to build their memory.

    Read More

  • Gender Differences on Memory

    1471 Words  | 3 Pages

    St. Jacques, P. L., Conway, M. A., & Cabeza, R. (2011). Gender differences in autobiographical memory for everyday events: Retrieval elicited by SenseCam images versus verbal cues. Memory, 19(7), 723-732. doi:10.1080/09658211.2010.516266

    Read More

  • Cognitive Perspective Of Amnesia

    1233 Words  | 3 Pages

    Amnesia is, by definition from DSM-IV, one or more episodes of the inability to recall important information or a total loss of memory. To begin, brain injuries or damage, strokes, seizures, lack of oxygen in the brain and tumors in the memory part of the brain are some of the ways that cause amnesia. Almost all injuries or damage to the brain will cause amnesia because of the chances that it will hit the memory part of the brain. In psychology, this disease can be viewed from a biological and cognitive perspective. Treatments can vary from hypnosis to being healthier. Ultimately, amnesia is accepted in society and people treat others with this disease better than others.

    Read More

  • The Reliability of Memory

    1483 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Sternberg (1999), memory is the extraction of past experiences for information to be used in the present. The retrieval of memory is essential in every aspect of daily life, whether it is for academics, work or social purposes. However, many often take memory for granted and assume that it can be relied on because of how realistic it appears in the mind. This form of memory is also known as flashbulb memory. (Brown and Kulik, 1977). The question of whether our memory is reliably accurate has been shown to have implications in providing precise details of past events. (The British Psychological Association, 2011). In this essay, I would put forth arguments that human memory, in fact, is not completely reliable in providing accurate depictions of our past experiences. Evidence can be seen in the following two studies that support these arguments by examining episodic memory in humans. The first study is by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) who found that memory can be modified by suggestions. The second study is by Naveh-Benjamin and Craik (1995) who found that there is a predisposition for memory to decline with increasing age.

    Read More

  • Episodic Memory Analysis

    665 Words  | 2 Pages

    The findings of Timothy A. Allen along with Norbert J. Fortin, and Erika Hayasaki, reveal further insight into the role episodic memory plays in everyday life for humans. Episodic memory can be understood as memory for personal experience. Episodic memory is a type of long term memory that individuals are consciously aware of; making it an explicit memory. With that being said, this type of memory allows people to relive and re-experience memories from their personal past in their mind. This is why many refer to episodic memory as mental time travel. Through mental time travel, individuals are able to recall the circumstances under which they encountered specific experiences. Circumstances can include concepts such as what, where, and when an experience happened. Given the power that this form of memory provides, it is argued that

    Read More

  • Personality And Personality Essay

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    Also the way I did things when younger was because of my surrounding like getting into fights with some of the kids and etc. One thing i did not never picked up from this was the used of drugs I was taught not to mess with those things and I was given the chance in my early childhood to experience drugs by gansters around the block but i always refused which by many of them that know me now that i am grown have to respect and admire it. Now what is used to recalled this is information would be sources of bias which would have to be memory related. This are memory that have been stored because they are not very unpleasent and according to chapter in the book those painful memory are often erased.

    Read More

More about Underlying Explanations for Forgetfulness

Open Document