Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

For decades, there has been controversy about whether forgetting is caused by decay over time or by interference from irrelevant information. We suggest that forgetting occurs because of decay or interference, depending on the memory representation. Recollection-based memories, supported by the hippocampus, are represented in orthogonal patterns and are therefore relatively resistant to interference from one another. Decay should be a major source of their forgetting. By contrast, familiarity-based memories, supported by extrahippocampal structures, are not represented in orthogonal patterns and are therefore sensitive to interference. In a study in which we manipulated the postencoding task-interference level and the length of the delay between study and testing, we provide direct evidence in support of our representation theory of forgetting. Recollection and familiarity were measured using the remember/know procedure. We show that the causes of forgetting depend on the nature of the underlying memory representation, which places the century-old puzzle of forgetting in a coherent framework.

Keywords

memory cognitive neuroscience episodic memory forgetting open materials preregistered

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bakker

Wicherts

J. M.

(2014). Outlier removal, sum scores, and the inflation of the Type I error rate in independent samples t tests: The power of alternatives and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 19, 409–427.

Chan

J. C.

McDermott

K. B.

(2007). The testing effect in recognition memory: A dual process account. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33, 431–437.

Dai

Leeder

J. S.

Cui

(2014). A modified generalized Fisher method for combining probabilities from dependent tests. Frontiers in Genetics, 5, Article 32. doi:10.3389/fgene.2014.00032

Diana

R. A.

Yonelinas

A. P.

Ranganath

(2007). Imaging recollection and familiarity in the medial temporal lobe: A three-component model. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 379–386.

Duarte

Graham

K. S.

Henson

R. N.

(2010). Age-related changes in neural activity associated with familiarity, recollection and false recognition. Neurobiology of Aging, 31, 1814–1830.

Ebbinghaus

(1913). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology ( Ruger

H. A.

Bussenius

C. E.

, Trans.). New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University. (Original work published 1885)

Fisher

R. A.

(1973). Statistical methods for research workers (14th ed.). New York, NY: Hafner.

Frankland

P. W.

Köhler

Josselyn

S. A.

(2013). Hippocampal neurogenesis and forgetting. Trends in Neurosciences, 36, 497–503.

Gardiner

Java

(1990). Recollective experience in word and nonword recognition. Memory & Cognition, 18, 23–30.

10.

Hardt

Nader

Nadel

(2013). Decay happens: The role of active forgetting in memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17, 111–120. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2013.01.001

11.

Hintzman

D. L.

(2010). How does repetition affect memory? Evidence from judgments of recency. Memory & Cognition, 38, 102–115.

12.

Ingram

K. M.

Mickes

Wixted

J. T.

(2011). Recollection can be weak and familiarity can be strong. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 325–339.

13.

Jacoby

L. L.

Jones

T. C.

Dolan

P. O.

(1998). Two effects of repetition: Support for a dual-process model of know judgments and exclusion errors. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 5, 705–709.

14.

Kucera

Francis

W. N.

(1967). Computational aspects of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.

15.

Kuhl

B. A.

Shah

A. T.

DuBrow

Wagner

A. D.

(2010). Resistance to forgetting associated with hippocampus-mediated reactivation during new learning. Nature Neuroscience, 13, 501–506.

16.

Leutgeb

J. K.

Leutgeb

Moser

M.-B.

Moser

E. I.

(2007). Pattern separation in the dentate gyrus and CA3 of the hippocampus. Science, 315, 961–966.

17.

Leys

Ley

Klein

Bernard

Licata

(2013). Detecting outliers: Do not use standard deviation around the mean, use absolute deviation around the median. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 764–766.

18.

McGeoch

J. A.

(1932). Forgetting and the law of disuse. Psychological Review, 39, 352–370.

19.

McKenzie

Frank

A. J.

Kinsky

N. R.

Porter

Rivière

P. D.

Eichenbaum

(2014). Hippocampal representation of related and opposing memories develop within distinct, hierarchically organized neural schemas. Neuron, 83, 202–215.

20.

Migo

E. M.

Mayes

A. R.

Montaldi

(2012). Measuring recollection and familiarity: Improving the remember/know procedure. Consciousness and Cognition, 21, 1435–1455.

21.

Nader

Schafe

G. E.

LeDoux

J. E.

(2000). Reply – reconsolidation: The labile nature of consolidation theory. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1, 216–219.

22.

Nelson

D. L.

McEvoy

C. L.

Schreiber

T. A.

(2004). The University of South Florida free association, rhyme, and word fragment norms. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 402–407.

23.

O’Reilly

R. C.

Norman

K. A.

(2002). Hippocampal and neocortical contributions to memory: Advances in the complementary learning systems framework. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 505–510.

24.

Roediger

H. L.

Karpicke

J. D.

(2006). The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1, 181–210.

25.

Sadeh

Ozubko

J. D.

Winocur

Moscovitch

(2014). How we forget may depend on how we remember. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 26–36.

26.

Slotnick

S. D.

Schacter

D. L.

(2004). A sensory signature that distinguishes true from false memories. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 664–672.

27.

Squire

L. R.

Wixted

J. T.

Clark

R. E.

(2007). Recognition memory and the medial temporal lobe: A new perspective. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8, 872–883.

28.

Tulving

(1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 26, 1–12.

29.

Tulving

Thomson

D. M.

(1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review, 80, 352–373.

30.

Underwood

B. J.

(1957). Interference and forgetting. Psychological Review, 64, 49–60.

31.

Wilcox

R. R.

(2009). Robust data analysis. In Millsap

R. E.

Maydeu-Olivares

(Eds.), The SAGE handbook of quantitative methods in psychology (pp. 387–403). London, England: Sage.

32.

Wixted

J. T.

(2004). The psychology and neuroscience of forgetting. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 235–269. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141555

33.

Yassa

M. A.

Stark

C. E.

(2011). Pattern separation in the hippocampus. Trends in Neurosciences, 34, 515–525.

34.

Yonelinas

(2002). The nature of recollection and familiarity: A review of 30 years of research. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 441–517.

35.

Yonelinas

Jacoby

L. L.

(1995). The relation between remembering and knowing as bases for recognition: Effects of size congruency. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 622–643.

36.

Zeithamova

Dominick

A. L.

Preston

A. R.

(2012). Hippocampal and ventral medial prefrontal activation during retrieval-mediated learning supports novel inference. Neuron, 75, 168–179.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.59 MB

0.36 MB

Forgetting Patterns Differentiate Between Two Forms of Memory Representation

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material