Forgetting is a common occurrence. Explain why each of the following "forgetting" situations" takes place: (a) Although people in the United States have seen the U.S. ten dollar bill on numerous occasions, explain why most people do not know what picture is on the back of this currency. (b) Most people believe the disuse theory of forgetting. Explain why disuse alone cannot fully explain

Question

forgetting. (c) Explain why couples who quarrel end up remembering and rehashing old arguments. (d) Explain why some recovered memories of sexual child abuse have been found to be false.

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer will include
(a) Few people in the U.S. have ever encoded the details of a ten dollar bill besides
the amount of the bill. Thus, this memory was never formed in the first place,
which explains forgetting due to encoding failure.

(b) The disuse theory does not seem to account for our ability to recover seemingly
forgotten memories through redintegration, relearning, and priming. It also
fails to explain why some unused memories fade, whereas others are carried for
life. A third contradiction is that elderly people who are growing senile may be so
forgetful that they cannot remember what happened a week ago, but have past
recollections that are vivid and clear.

(c) The bodily state that exists during learning can be a strong retrieval cue for later
memory, an effect known as state-dependent learning. Therefore, if you are in a
happy mood, you are more likely to remember recent happy events. If you are in
a bad mood, you will tend to have unpleasant memories. Such links between
emotional cues and memory could explain why couples who quarrel end up
remembering and rehashing old arguments.

(d) Some recovered memories of child abuse have been found to be false because
these "memories" were "recovered" using hypnosis, guided visualization,
suggestion, age regression, administering the so-called "truth drug" Amytal, and
similar techniques, which can elicit fantasies that are mistaken for real memories,
but are actually false memories. Some repressed memories of abuse that return to
awareness are genuine and must be dealt with. However, there is little doubt that
some "recovered" memories are pure fantasy. No matter how real a recovered
memory may seem, it could be false, unless it can be verified by others, or by
court or medical records. The saddest thing about such claims is that they
decrease public sensitivity to actual abuse.