《Intro to Psychology》Shishak

4、chapter 4

　　As we learned in class, memory is the mental processes that enable us to retain and use information over time. Forgetting is the inability to recall information that was previously available.

　　I still remember when I was in high school; there was an exam for graduating. The exam was important for students because it determined whether you would be allowed to college. Even now, I still remember clearly what happened on exam day. I can recall the weather, the way the teacher handed out papers, the classroom I was in, the seat I sat in, the students who sat next to me…. All these memories are vivid, seem like they happened yesterday. I guess that is because the exam was so important, the memory of it has become a flashbulb memory (thought to involve the recall of very specific images or details surrounding a significant, rare, or vivid event).

　　In the two weeks before the exam, I memorized six books on history, four books on geography. I studied until midnight; otherwise I could not read all materials before the exam. Even though it was very hard, I did remember those materials pretty well at that time. I found that study is efficient when you are in the critical moment, you can memorize most of the information. After a two month summer vocation without reading textbooks at all, I found I couldn’t remember anything at all. I lost what I had recited before.

　　After I learned the Chapter of Memory, I tried to analysis the phenomena. First, those materials were sensory information, I summarized ideas and boiled down the information. I only remembered what I selected. Those I didn’t attend, I forgot in three seconds. Then, that sensory information I picked became short-term memory (memory system used to hold small amounts of information for relatively brief periods of time). After reciting them again and again during those two weeks, they became long-term memory (memory system used for relatively permanent storage of meaningful information). So, I could remember them and answer to the questions on the exam. In the summer vocation, I didn’t touch books at all, that means I did not retrieve (the process of recovering information stored in memory so that we are consciously aware of it) any of those information. So, even those materials that were my long-term memory were forgotten.

　　At the beginning of the new semester, I told myself I was not going to have that terrible experience again, so I chose science as my major. I didn’t have to learn history and geography and seldom used them anymore, so those memories got Disuse (Theories that memory weakens when not periodically used or retrieved). At the meanwhile, I learned new subjects, such as biology, chemistry, physics, etc. So those memories also got Retroactive Interference (Tendency for new memories to impair retrieval of old memory). Anyway, I forgot the memories on history and geography and never picked up them again.