Lesson 13:

Forgetting Curve - The Work of Ebbinghaus

Sunday, 31 March 13

Lesson 13: Forgetting & Memory Loss

EXAM QUESTION

(Taken from VCAA Sample Exam 2011)

Sunday, 31 March 13

Model Response:

a. The Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon is knowing that your memory does have the name, item or material you are trying to remember but just cannot retrieve it at that moment.

b. Any one of the following:

1) Retrieval Failure Theory - the information was available but not accessible due to inadequate retrieval cues

OR

2) Interference Theory - the information is available but is blocked by interference from similar sounding material

Sunday, 31 March 13

Lesson 13 - The Forgetting Curve - The Work of Ebbinghaus

Objectives

Outline techniques used to manipulate and improve memory

Describe the significance of the Forgetting curve as informed by the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus

Explain the measures of retention including the relative sensitivity of recall, recognition and relearning

Explain the effect of context dependent cues and state dependent cues

 

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Recall the phone number from last lesson

Sunday, 31 March 13

9458 2329

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What is your phone number?

Sunday, 31 March 13

Why is it we can remember our phone number which we learnt many years

prior, but cannot remember a number we learnt last lesson???

Sunday, 31 March 13

The forgetting curve represents the normal pattern of forgetting for new meaningless

information

Generally we forget about 60% of what we have just

processed within the first 20 minutes.

More than half of memory loss that occurs is within the

first hour.

  Most of the material that will be forgotten is done so within the first 8 hours, then it

steadies out.

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You will forget less if:

* The information is meaningful

* Information is learnt over an extended period of time

* Information is encoded well

Sunday, 31 March 13

Measures of Retention – Measuring Memory

Recall

Recognition

Relearning

Sunday, 31 March 13

Recall - Being asked to reproduce information with the fewest possible cues.

Free Recall – asked to remember as much information as possible in no particular order -List of grocery items

Serial Recall – asked to recall information in a particular order - Names of Cities (itinerary)

Cued Recall - given a cue then asked to recall Seven Dwarfs: first letter of

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Recognition - Identifying correct information from among alternatives.

Can retrieve more this way as recognition provides more cues for retrieving from LTM.

Recognition is a more sensitive measure

Example – multiple choice Q’s

Sunday, 31 March 13

Relearning - Even if you can’t recall or recognise initially it doesn’t mean there is no memory. If you relearn it and learn it more quickly the

2nd time, the assumption is that there was some memory available

Especially true for procedural memory - saying its like riding a bicycle - never forget how to ride a bike

Savings score - if the time taken to learn the material originally can be measured and compared with the time taken to relearn the same

material, then a savings score can be calculated

(time for original learning) - (times for relearning) x 100%

__________________________________________

(time for original learning

Savings Score

=

Sunday, 31 March 13

Measures of retention - sensitivity

Recall worst

Recognition better

Relearning best

Sunday, 31 March 13