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Asked by anon-188126 to Warren, Shanti, Pizza Ka Yee, Paul, Nadine, Alex on 14 Nov 2018.
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Alex Reid answered on 14 Nov 2018:
Hi! Forgetting can happen in a few different ways and it actually a whole area of psychology. Memory formation is generally understood as happening in three stages: aquisition, storage, and retrieval. As such, forgetting can happen at any of these points: a failure to get the information into your head, a failure keeping it there, and a failure getting it out! Of these three stages retrieval is the point where intervention can really help. A memory you have ‘forgotten’ might still be there, it just needs the right cue to get it out, such as a familiar sight, sound or smell (in fact smells are really good for this). It is kind of weird to think about, but some memories you have may never be retrieved again due to the lack of a good enough cue. In other words there will be things stored in your brain that will never see the light of day!
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Paul Matusz answered on 14 Nov 2018:
I think Alex gave a great asnwer already. There are these very cool theories around these days that state that we, as any organisms, act to minimise our surprise (as it’s evolutionary important to us). So following these theories the events or information that trigger your surprise – and so that basically require you to change your predictions (that are based about your knowledge and assumptions – about someone’s personality, about how you think some device works, etc. etc.) – these “error”-related events might be particularly strongly remembered. To give you an example, I used to not pay much attention to how wet the streets are till i started using a bike with very slim tyres. Then one day it was raining and I tried to turn quickly, and I had an accident that resulted in not 1, but 2 sprained wrists (and so me not being able to write well on my laptop or go to the gym for several good weeks!). Suffices to say that these days and when I use that bike, I DO pay a lot of attention if the road is wet. Funny, no? 😉
Alex does point to an important feature of our memory is that it is so important to have the “right” cue – and you will retrieve a given memory, almost instantly. For example, again, a good friend of mine from my Masters studies used to wear one very particular perfume (I can’t rember the smell right now even if I recall her face. hm….). But one time I walked down the street and someone was wearing the very same perfume – and it instantly brought my friend to my memory, her face, voice etc. – and it was completely independent of what I was doing at the time. How our memory retrievel is a fascinating topic – and I used a small example as smells are particularly strong signals for our memory. 🙂 -
Shanti Shanker answered on 16 Nov 2018:
It depends on how it is forgotten. If the memory has been encoded and stored then under the right circumstances I would argue that one can definitely retrieve it, but it may not necessarily be easy. But if you have not paid attention and did not even encode it then you will never be able to retrieve it – as it was never actually a memory!
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