The study of oblivion

If the functioning of memory has been a focus of interest for psychology for centuries, it has been no less so Forgetting as a curious, fascinating and often frustrating phenomenon. In fact, knowing the type of information or the circumstances in which we forget more can be tremendously useful not only for our daily lives, but it can also give us information about memory in neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease or different dementias. .

In this way, we will discover What is forgetting, how there are two types of forgetting and how, from science, forgetting is practically undemonstrable. Nietzsche said:

What is oblivion?

Forgetting gives its name to a phenomenon in which the trace formed in memory in relation to certain information is fragmented. There has been poor storage, poor preservation, or poor retrieval of the memory.

As it breaks, Details of that information are lost, until the trace is lost, giving way to complete oblivion.. It can be said that information has been forgotten when the neural network – which at a neurobiological level supports the recovery of that memory – has disappeared. It can only be determined that information has permanently disappeared through the recovery process.

Therefore, while forgetting cannot be proven (does the loss of details make it difficult to recover it or has it been completely forgotten?) we can consider everything that, at a given moment, causes the person to be unable to remember something. It doesn’t matter if that something will be recovered or not in the future, we can say that the person has forgotten it..

There is no single type of forgetting

In the study of the phenomenon called “forgetting”, two types have been identified that are clinically relevant for the treatment of psychological disorders where memory plays an essential role; This occurs, for example, in post-traumatic stress disorder.

The incidental forgetfulness They are those forgetfulness that are made, pardon the redundancy, without the intention of forgetting. Schacter (2003) argued that incidental forgetting is essential for the proper functioning of memory; It is a faculty of the human being that must be Adaptive, flexible, and work at your most optimal capacity. Since memory is not unlimited, if there were no errors or forgetfulness, we would find a glass ceiling of everything we can memorize.

Thus, it is good to forget certain information that, at the current moment, is not useful. For example, although it is relevant to remember the license plate of the first vehicle we drove, the truth is that this type of information can be forgotten, since it is no longer useful and can interfere with current memories.

The second type of memory that we find is the motivated memory, which occurs when the person carries out processes or behaviors whose objective is to reduce the accessibility of a memory. This can happen when you live a traumatic situation, a situation that we try to forget, avoiding everything that could motivate its accessibility. Since it is not remembered, the imprint can become weaker.

The most frequent incidental forgetfulness

Gordon (1995) studied what type of information people tend to forget incidentally. This list is not random, and can be explained by why many people are “bad with names” or why some forget where they put their keys too often.

Between the most frequent incidental forgetfulnesswe highlight:

Names. Usually, when they tell us a name, we find ourselves in a different situation than usual. We may be distracted by it at the time of coding. It is encoded by linking information to something, more specifically to oneself, and a new face and name are often not (yet) related to us.Where have I put the keys? Whether it is keys or any other object, this happens because leaving one object or another in one place is usually a automatic process. Unless that object is relevant at the moment (for example, we are more likely to be able to tell where the box of shells that a friend gave us for our birthday two days ago is than to say where the keys are), such as leaving the keys or keeping the keys is something that has already been automated, we don’t pay attention.I already told someone something! Sometimes, we find ourselves in the position of telling something to someone to whom we have already told it. On these occasions there are usually source attribution errorsbecause it is the context that gives us clues that this has not been told, more than the person we are with.

Another type of information that is often forgotten is: faces, directions, forgetting what you have started to do, what you were saying and what you have done (for example, turning off the gas).

The seven sins of memory (Schacter, 2003)

Memory must be cared for by its users, and there are many who make “errors” that encourage forgetting and not remembering. There are, therefore, seven phenomena that can cause memory to regress and not function optimally. These are:

Course: forgetting occurs through the weakening of the trace and the pass of the time.Distractibility: when people are Distracted, stressed, or double-tasking, no deep encoding occurs. This makes sense because memory is recording more information than what we want to remember, and that is why selective attention is so relevant.Blocking: Blockages may occur due to having retrieved inappropriate information for that moment.Misattribution.Suggestibility.Propensity: the attitudes and emotions that people have can modify their memory, interfering with the reliability of our memory.Persistence: the repeated memories They can also cause a modification in their content since they have been remembered many times.

Sins 1, 2 and 3 would lead to errors of omissionwhile sins 4, 5, 6 and 7 would lead to errors of commission (the subject remembers something but remembers it wrong).

Forgetfulness persists in conditions such as some anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder or dissociative disorders, therefore its study and differentiation may be relevant for the treatment of such distressing disorders. Thus, theories and laws can be established not only about memory, but also about forgetting, such as, for example, Just’s Law:

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