Relationship between Memory and Forgetting and its Effect on Our Daily Lives - Research Paper Example

Relationship between Memory and Forgetting and its Effect on Our Daily Lives Introduction Research in different field have shown that memory and forgetfulness are intertwined. Memory and forgetfulness has particularly been important in the discipline of education and learning. This is because educators have tried to understand how they can enhance information retention making learning more successful. Psychologists have also tried to explain the different factors that affect memory such a people tend to forget unpleasant events in their lives and remember the good ones (Ricoeur, 165). Sleep is also aid to affect memory with certain stage of sleep seen to enhance memory formation. The topic of memory and forgetfulness has been discussed broadly by people from different field. Certain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease have been seen to affect memory. Memory and forgetfulness plays very important roles in people’s lives (Schacter, 150). For instance people with sharp memory excel in academics. Forgetfulness has also been seen to have an advantage of making it possible for people to enjoy the same things as if they are experiencing it for the first time. This article explores the relationship that memory has with forgetfulness and how this affects people’s daily lives. Memory is the mental record that people keep of their past experiences, knowledge and skills learnt. Memory formation takes several stages. The information is firsts encoded through the senses such as sight, hearing and touching. This information is fir tent tot the brain which discerns whether it is important or not. If not, the information is discarded immediately. If it is perceived to be crucial, it is passed on to the short memory bank (Ricoeur, 63). Reinforcement of this information leads to it being transferred to the long term memory bank. This information is retrieved back to the short memory when the information is needed through remembrance (Schacter, 134). Forgetfulness is seen as a hindrance to the retrieval stage of memory although it has also been classified as the fourth stage of memory development. One relationship which has been seen between memory and forgetfulness is on the issue of time. The time taken to perceive a certain object or go through a certain experience determines whether it is remembered or forgotten. The shorter the duration the higher the possibility of forgetting the experience while the longer the experience take the higher the possibility of it being stored in memory for a longer time. For instance, a person trying to retrieve some information from the memory bank may slow down on the activity that they may be doing in order to remember. A person trying to forget an unpleasant fight may go for jogging or even drive fast. Memory has thus been associated with slowness while forgetfulness is related with speed (McCombe, 2). For instance, meeting a person for the first time in a brief period of may be five minute. It may be difficult to recognize the same person later after meeting them in a different context. However, it may be easy to recognize a celebrity figure in a crowd because one may have seen the figure in posters or different areas. From the explanation given above, it can be observed that the relationship between memory and forgetting is an intricate one and can be influenced by a number of factors. Getting memory lapses do not necessarily mean that one is suffering from a certain disease. Some of the factors that influence memory include multitasking and stress. Forgetting can be embarrassing sometimes when a person fails to remember important events or even person. It can also interfere with the daily lives of a person in many ways making them to fail to perform satisfactorily in the work place or in other aspects of life and can thus be very frustrating (Ricoeur, 187). People need to understand how their lifestyle and the environment they live in affect memory. They can use this knowledge to enhance memory making them live more satisfying life. Besides psychological factors such a stress and mental disorders, memory is also influenced by poor nutrition and lack of maintaining memory. For instance, in a learning situation, information is stored in the long term memory bank through repetition where the brain gets several stimuli. This means that learning should emphasize on exposing the learner to certain information that need to be retained (Schacter, 140). This is why rote memorization is discouraged as the information is easily forgotten. Sleep has also been observed as an important aspect in development of memory. This is because some stages of sleep which are involved in the development of important stage in memory formation. This is why staying for long hours without sleep which is common for university students have been seen as to work against the goal of learning (Casey, 78). Sleep is thus an important factor in promoting learning as studying. Most importantly, it has also been said that memory is enhanced through repeated stimulation of the brain making it easy for information to be retrieved. As such, in order to reduce forgetfulness, learning can be enhanced by ensuring that information is perceived in more than one sense. This could be through accompanying lecturing with visual illustrations and actively involving the learner (Casey, 34). This also applies in other sectors such as advertising. A brand name is established through repeatedly exposing the information of the specific products to the target customers. It could also be done through the use of catchy phrases, tunes or even images. Memory is blurred in cases where different kind of information is closely related. This is applied in advertisement where the organization refrains from using advertising which is similar to that of their competitors (Schacter, 167). Because forgetfulness is a common factor, people have developed ways of dealing with it. This is through using written records such as shopping list or a “to do list” which ensures that none of the items is left out. However, one cannot ignore that there are some disorders related to memory losses such as Amnesia and Alhezemers. When a person realizes that they have serious memory loss, it is good to seek medical assistance so that they can start on management programs that will ensure that their live is not adversely affected by such conditions. It is quite frustrating not to be able to remember experiences in the past even the good ones. This is because fond memories of experiences that we have gone through in the past gives people the hope to push on with life (Schacter, 56). However, in case where a person cannot remember their whole past, it would be hard to deal with present conditions. Conclusion It has been observed that there are many factor that influence memory and forgetting. The common factors are tress, multitasking, health problems, fatigue, nature of the experience and many more. In order to increase memory retention especially in learning it is important to understand the connection between memory and forgetting and thus develop ways through which learning can be enhanced. This is also applied in other aspect of life making people to lead more fulfilling lives. Work Cited Casey, Edward S. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Print. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:mA44OGF16AcJ:eprints.qut.edu.au/1313/2/The_Fastness_of_Forgetting.pdf+&hl=en&gl=ke&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg8uDBvQkxMk1gk0b3hvhtMUBMw2JRD8b0ZH8kPoFoGz0NgNsNt_y-WfVLk5Kk1xVKdKvahAu8xIz1N5dxlIoKmz06R4fX-xb-kR3WB_WJqiPL99ZXXcIJuJTTN44NAMC37v0y4&sig=AHIEtbSnQeGg00yiManP6HLU-6pFWVZOOQ McCombe, Christine. The fastness of forgetting: An exploration of memory, Narrative and Emergent Meaning. 2009. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicao [u.a.: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2006. Print. Schacter, Daniel L. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print. Read More