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Forgetting in Short-Term and Long-Term Memory

Introduction

The aspect of forgetting is an issue that has become quite common in life. At times the memory slips that persons experience are fairly innocuous and simple like forgetting where the car keys are or even forgetting to call someone back. With other instances, forgetting is attributable to dire and serious consequences such as the inability for an individual to recall their family relations or education background. Our human memory in not perfect, hence storing and the retrieval of information from the brain could sometimes be influenced because of biological or psychological issues. Memories are usually under the effects of how the person undertakes the processing of events through emotions, perceptions, and interpretations. Memory failures and forgetting are aspects that have become quite common with most people especially the elderly, who are often relying on various methods that are helpful in recording and remembering important information.

As indicated by the famous philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche “the advantage of a bad memory relates with the element that an individual enjoys the same good thing severally without having a recollection.” However, forgetting things is quite annoying and usually affects the person’s life, activities, and relationships. According to the research by Shiffrin (2018), memory is considerably not static and by this, how an individual remembers an event is highly dependent upon variables that are inclusive of how much sleep one has had to their emotions during the occurrence of the event (Borelli, Grennan, and Muth, 2020). Notably, memory is not always reliable because it is influenced not only by the recorded events but other factors like knowledge, interpretations, emotions, experiences, and perceptions also affect our memory status. Memories are usually not permanent as they are subject to disappear as people age or because of psychological/mental problems.

Theories of Forgetting

There are various psychology theories seeking to address and expound on the issues relating to why humans are usually forgetting information and their past memories. The existing theories are inclusive of the interference theory, the trace decay theory, and the cue-dependent forgetting. According to the research by Medic et al. (2017), the trace decay theory stipulates that all memories are subject to fade automatically with time. Under the theory, an individual has to follow a specific pathway to facilitate the recollection of a memory and if the pathway is unused for a long period, then the memory is subject to experience memory decay (Borelli, Grennan, and Muth, 2020). In this sense, the aspect of memory decay results in the inability to recall or difficulty for a person to recall information. Through the theory, memory decay facilitates forgetting under both short term and long-term memory loss if the trace pathway is left inaccessible.

The theory of interference as indicated through the research by Shiffrin (2018) articulates to the notion that people will easily recall recent events compared to those from the past. Under the interference theory, the aspect of transience, which is the deterioration of specific memory, will occur because memories are subject to incur interference due to congestion by other memories. By this, proactive and retroactive interferences influence our ability to facilitate proper retrieval of a past memory and often results in permanent forgetting. The alternative theory of cue-dependent forgetting attributes towards our memory storage capabilities, such that persons usually tend to record sensory data along with their emotional state and mood. In this sense, the mood of the person will impact the memory retrieval process, such that with a good mood individuals will tend to recollect good memories and vice versa. In essence, the theory suggests that people are often cued to remember certain memories of their life under the influence of their environment and emotional state.

Short-Term Memory Loss

The aspect of short term memory loss is subject to occur when an individual forgets things they have seen, heard, or the actions they did quite recently. Particularly, short-term memory loss would usually be quite common when persons grow older especially during late adulthood. According to the study by Davis and Zhong (2017), the occurrence of short term memory loss could also be because of deeper psychological problems such as brain injury, dementia, and other mental health issues like PTSD. Specifically, the notion of short term memory is in relations to how the human brain facilitates storage of small information/data amounts that we gain during routine life activities. There are distinct characteristics that are usually noticeable with forgetting because of short-term memory loss. These symptoms are inclusive of forgetting recent events, what someone saw, forgetting the location of something like car keys, and even asking similar questions repeatedly.

Long-Term Memory Loss

Forgetting as a memory and brain activity can also be attributable to long-term memory loss issues’ considering the brain is our memory bank meant to guarantee effective storage and deposit of information. Forgetting from the LTM (long term memory) loss perspective can be properly explained using the theory of interference, lacking consolidation, and retrieval failure (Gulia and Kumar, 2018). By this, the information/data in our brains can be subject to implicit interference during the encoding process causing distortion when trying to access. People could also be unable to facilitate the retrieval of information because of LTM emerging due to neurocognitive disorders like dementia and mental illnesses like amnesia, which is quite common among the older population (Festini and Reuter-Lorenz, 2013). It is estimated that approximately 10 per cent of the American population aged above the age of 65 are suffering from issues pertaining to long term memory losses. Most of the common symptoms attributable to long term memory loss are inclusive of the mixing up of words when speaking, loss of sense of direction even in familiar places, taking long to complete familiar tasks, as well as mood and behavioral disorders.

Diagnosis of Short & Long Term Memory Loss

The element of time usually plays an integral part towards the understanding of the various reasons that facilitate the emergence of forgetting and memory loss. Facilitating the necessary diagnosis of memory loss requires physicians to assess the patient by making inquiries regarding brain injuries, mental health aspects, sleeping habits, medications, and their drug/alcohol usage. By taking into consideration the implicit cause of the memory loss issues; that is whether the person is suffering from neurological, cognitive, psychological or else mental impairment, the doctor ensures the undertaking of the necessary measures that could warrant better treatment mechanisms. Memory loss aspects are also characteristic of aging that usually is an indication of the onset of dementia. With the elderly, memory loss could be addressed through reinforcing their capabilities to remember using routine physical activities, better sleep time, and ensuring they always eat healthy.

Conclusion

Particularly, the various research studies into memory loss and forgetfulness indicate that the brain is usually the element that affects slow-down in our thinking, memory status, and reasoning. In this sense, there are several causes that impact our memory state and forgetting tendencies and are most prevalent amongst the older population especially people over the age of 60 years. With most issues regarding forgetting, most people are often affected by mental illnesses, brain injuries, and old age. Most people are also experiencing short term memory loss because of issues relating to stress, depression, and anxiety that would always impact the undertaking of routine chores because of their inability to facilitate proper concentration levels. To conclude, memory loss and forgetting are elements that are usually quite disruptive to the lives of people as the affected individuals will more than often require guidance and help to complete minor chores and work that they are supposedly quite aware and good at doing.

References

Borelli, C. M., Grennan, D., & Muth, C. C. (2020). Causes of Memory Loss in Elderly Persons.

JAMA, 323(5), 486-486.

Davis, R. L., & Zhong, Y. (2017). The biology of forgetting—a perspective. Neuron, 95(3), 490-

503.

Festini, S. B., & Reuter-Lorenz, P. A. (2013). The short-and long-term consequences of directed

forgetting in a working memory task. Memory, 21(7), 763-777.

Gulia, K. K., & Kumar, V. M. (2018). Sleep disorders in the elderly: a growing challenge.

Psychogeriatrics, 18(3), 155-165.

Medic, G., Wille, M., & Hemels, M. E. (2017). Short-and long-term health consequences of

sleep disruption. Nature and science of sleep, 9, 151.

Shiffrin, R. M. (2018). Short-term store: The basis for a memory system. In Cognitive theory

(pp. 193-218). Psychology Press.