Reaching Lifelong Goals as a Nontraditional Student

While reviewing some of my materials from my College Skills Class, I ran into a great description of how we FORGET information.   This ties right into my post about Highlighting Notes and Textbooks.   Review of studied materials is essential to actually learning it.  The following five theories of forgetting are offered by psychologists to explain some of the reasons information can be “forgotten”.  The Decay Theory applies to short term memory.  It is possible that some stimuli, when received, are too weak.   The information simply decays or fades away before it can be sorted or processed.  Since this information is never processed, it was really never “learned”.  The second theory, Displacement Theory, also occurs in the short term memory.  The Displacement Theory states that if TOO MUCH information comes into the short term memory too rapidly, some of the information already in short-term memory is shoved aside, or “displaced”.   Adequate time was not given to process the information that was displaced; therefore, it was never really “learned” either.   The  Interference Theory applies to confusion that take’s place in long-term memory.   One type of confusion occurs when the new information you are learning interferes with your recalling or retrieving information that was previously learned.   For example, if you once knew how to speak Portuguese, but are now studying Spanish, words that you once knew in Portuguese may be difficult to locate in memory because your newly acquired language skills in Spanish are interfering.  This type of forgetting occurs when old information interferes with learning new information.  The old information is so thoroughly imprinted that it is recalled or retrieved instead of the new information you are trying to learn.  The  Incomplete Encoding Theory applies to information as it is rehearsed.   Some information is only partially learned or learned inaccurately.   When a person tries to recall this information, “forgetting” occurs.  The information cannot be remembered because it was not completely processed or imprinted in the memory system.   The Retrieval Failure Theory occurs when information has been learned, but cannot be “found” in the memory “bank”.   Failure to locate information in memory may be attributed to a weak organizational system for storing or “filing” information or to lack of use.  The information learned was not firmly attached or associated to well developed schemas (“file folders in your memory bank”) or ongoing review to practice accessing the information did not occur.    We see here that information can be “forgotten” during several different stages of the process of learning information.  Effective strategies for taking in information and processing, storing and rehearsing it can reduce or eliminate the effects of these five theories of forgetting.