We all travel through the forgetting curve, but… do you know what it is?

It was Ebbinghaus (1885) who was the first to systematically study how we forget as time passed.. We are all intuitively aware of this phenomenon, which is why we review the information that we want to keep in our memory, thus preventing it from being erased over time. Thus, we all slide down the curve of oblivion, even if we do not know how to explain it in this way.

The most curious thing is that to study this phenomenon, which happens to all of us to a greater or lesser extent but in a similar way, Ebbinghaus was his own experimental subject. In this way he ended up defining what is known today as the forgetting curve.

As we say, Ebbinghaus was the first psychologist to scientifically study memory or at least he was the first to try.. He trained at the University of Bonn, where he obtained his doctorate in 1873. He also developed his entire career as a memory researcher keeping one idea in mind: quantitative analysis methods were applicable to higher mental processes.

In other words, Ebbinghaus thought that in psychology you could measure and measure well. To do this, he did not hesitate to take as a reference variable one in which we all measure: time. In his case, the time of forgetting.

He carried out a large number of very reliable experiments for the experimental control instruments available at the time. With these experiments tried to describe the functioning of our memory based on a series of laws.

For example, he performed a test to explore memory, known as the “gap test,” based on the repetition of sentences in which some words had been voluntarily omitted. With this work he not only hoped that it would be possible to work on understanding the nature of learning and forgetting, but that it would have practical value in the educational field.

Many of the criticisms that the conclusions of his research have received are based on the fact that his interest was rather in the acquisition of habits of verbal repetition rather than in the study of memory as it operates in daily life situations.

That is to say, it is said that his results are very good for controlled laboratory conditions, but that in real life our memory is subject to conditions that can hardly be replicated in a laboratory, such as motivation, unintentional review or influence of emotional impact.

His works include The Intelligence of School Children (1897), Memory (1913), Textbook of Experimental Psychology, vol. 1 (1902), vol. 2 (1908). Before talking about the forgetting curve, It is necessary to know some basic aspects about the memory and learning that will help us better understand the importance of this curve.

What is learning?

It is not easy to define learning formally because there are many different perspectives. Each of them emphasizes a different facet of this complex process. A definition of learning might simply refer to observable behavior.

For example, the fact that someone drives a car well indicates that that person has learned to drive. Another definition of learning could also refer to a state of internal knowledge that could be demonstrated, in turn, by giving examples of how a theory is fulfilled.

Many dictionaries define this type of learning as “knowledge acquired through study.” In everyday language we say we know the Greek alphabet, the names of the bones of the inner ear or the stars of the Cassiopeia constellation. Both perspectives (observable behavior and internal state) are important and compatible points of view in contemporary learning theory.

Thus, learning can be defined as follows: “Learning is an inferred change in the mental state of an organism, which is a consequence of experience and influences it in a relatively permanent way in the organism’s potential for subsequent adaptive behavior.

The Ebbinghaus studies

The laws of association directly influenced the study of learning. There is no better example of this than the work of H. Ebbinghaus (1850-1909). According to Ebbinghaus, the development of an association between two mental events could best be studied using stimuli that were devoid of any prior association.

Precisely, seeking to work with stimuli that did not make sense, Ebbinghaus used the so-called nonsense syllables (BIJ or LQX) that he considered had no inherent meaning. Ebbinghaus spent a lot of time associating one stimulus with another, and then reciting them.

Working in this way and with this type of stimuli (nonsense syllables), directly tested many of the association’s principles, developed more than 100 years earlier. For example, he determined whether stimuli written together in the list would be more strongly associated than syllables that were not close together.

Ebbinghaus’s research confirmed many of the ideas first proposed by British empiricists. For example, proactive associations are stronger than retroactive ones (if syllable “A” precedes syllable “B”, then “A” evokes the memory of “B” better than “B” evokes the memory of “A”). ). Interesting right?

The memory

Studying learning is studying memory and, therefore, also the forgetting curve. Think that learning would not be possible without memory because each execution of a learned reaction requires memory (partial or total) of the previous trial.

Memory phases

What is stored in our memory, what we learn, goes through at least three phases: encoding, storage and retrieval. In the first phase of all learning, what we do is encode the information, translate it into the language of our nervous system and in this language make a place for it in our memory.

Second, during the retention or storage phase, information or knowledge persists over time. In some cases this phase can be quite brief. For example, Information in short-term memory lasts only approximately 15 to 20 seconds.

In other cases, the storage of a memory can last a lifetime. This form of storage is called “long-term memory”. In third place, The recovery or execution phase is the one in which the individual remembers the information and makes the responseoffering evidence of having previously learned.

If the execution is adequate with respect to the levels shown during the acquisition, we say that the forgetfulness is minimal. However, If execution decreases significantly we say that forgetting has occurred. Furthermore, in many cases it is easy to quantify how much has been lost and how long it took us to lose a specific part of what we encoded at the time.

Why does the forgetting curve occur?

A fundamental challenge in psychology is to understand why memories persist once they are encoded or, conversely, why forgetting occurs after learning. There are several approaches that attempt to answer these questions.

Storage theories

Some storage theories focus on what happens to information during the storage phase. For example, The decay theory states that forgetting occurs because memories weaken, or decays in strength, during the retention interval. It’s something like what happens to footprints in the sand on the beach.

Although some evidence supports this view, Few contemporary theorists describe forgetting in terms of memory decay.

On the other hand, Interference theory states that forgetting occurs because competing memory items are acquired during the retention interval.. For example, the acquisition of new information can cause us to forget previous information (retroactive interference). It happens to us when a problem has many and complex statements instead of one and simple one, in the end we get lost.

Likewise, the presence of previous information can interfere with the expression of a recently formed memory. (proactive interference). For example, we will remember someone’s phone number better if it looks like ours.

Recovery Theories

Recovery theories claim that Forgetting is the consequence of a failure to retrieve information during the execution phase. That is, the memory item “survives” the retention interval, but the subject simply cannot access it.

A good analogy would be to look in a library for a book misplaced on the shelves. The book is in the library (the information is intact) but cannot be found (the subject cannot recover the information). Much contemporary memory research supports this view.

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

The simple passage of time seems to have a negative effect on retention capacity. As we have already mentioned, it was Ebbinghaus (1885) who was the first to systematically study the loss of information in memory over time, defining what is known as The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. The concept “curve” refers to the graph that emerged as a result of his research.

We have already seen that he himself was the subject of his investigations and that The study consisted of learning lists of thirteen syllables that were repeated until no errors were made in two successive attempts. Subsequently, they evaluated their retention capacity at intervals between twenty minutes and one month. From these types of experiments he constructed his famous forgetting curve.

What results did Ebbinghaus obtain?

These results try to explain how long content can be kept in memory if it is not reviewed enough. The results found in their studies showed that forgetting occurred even after the shortest intervals.

He further found that, with non-significant material and therefore no association, forgetting increased as time passed, a lot at first and more slowly later. Thus, if we graphed this information we would see how the curve of…