The Study Of Oblivion

If the functioning of memory has been a focus of interest for psychology for centuries, forgetting has been no less so as a curious, fascinating and often frustrating phenomenon. In fact, knowing the type of information or the circumstances in which we have more forgetfulness can be tremendously useful not only for our day to day 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 forgetting is, how there are two types of forgetting and how, from science, forgetting is practically unprovable. Nietzsche said:

What is oblivion?

Forgetfulness gives 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 recall retrieval.

As it is broken, 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 the neurobiological level supports the recovery of that memory – has disappeared. Information can only be determined to be permanently missing through the recovery process.

Therefore, while forgetting cannot be demonstrated (does the loss of details make it difficult to recover or have you forgotten it completely?) We can consider everything that, at a given moment, causes the person to be unable to remember something. It does not 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 forgetfulness

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

The incidental oversights are those oversights that are made, redundant, with no intention to forget. Schacter (2003) argued that incidental forgetting is essential for the proper functioning of memory; it is a faculty of the human being that has to be adaptive, flexible, and work in its most optimal capacity. As memory is not unlimited, if there were no mistakes or forgetfulness, we would find ourselves with a glass ceiling of everything we can memorize.

Thus, it is good to forget certain information that, at the present time, is not useful. For example, although it is relevant to remember the license plate of the first vehicle we drive, the truth is that this type of information can be forgotten, as 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 performs processes or behaviors whose objective is to reduce the accessibility of a memory. This can happen when you experience a traumatic situation, a situation that you try to forget by avoiding everything that may motivate its accessibility. As it is not remembered, the footprint can become weaker.

The most frequent incidental forgetfulness

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

Among the most frequent incidental forgetfulness, we highlight:

• Names. Usually, when they tell us a name, we find ourselves in a different situation than usual. We can be distracted by it at the time of encoding. It is encoded by linking the 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? Be it the keys or any other object, this happens because leaving one object or another in one place is usually an automatic process. Unless that object is relevant at the time (for example, it is more likely that we can tell where the box of shells that a friend gave us for our birthday two days ago is, than say where the keys are), such as leaving The keys or keeping the keys is something that has already been automated, we do not pay attention.
• I’ve already told someone something!  Sometimes, we find ourselves in the position of telling something to someone to whom we have already said it. On these occasions, errors of attribution of the source usually occur , since it is the context that gives us clues that this has not been told, more than the person with whom we are.

Another type of information that is often forgotten is: faces, directions, forgetting what has started to be done, what was being said and what has been done (for example, turn off the gas).

The seven sins of memory (Schacter, 2003)

Memory has to be taken care of by its users, and there are not a few who make “mistakes” that encourage forgetting and not remembering. Thus, there are seven phenomena that can cause memory to recede and not function optimally. These are:

• Course : oblivion occurs through the weakening of the footprint and the passage of time.
• Distractibility – When people are distracted, stressed, or on double duty, no deep coding occurs. This makes sense because memory is recording more information than we want to remember, and that is why selective attention is so relevant.

• Blocking: crashes can occur due to having retrieved the inappropriate information for that moment.
• Wrong attribution.
• Suggestibility.
• Propensity : the attitudes and emotions that people have can change their memory, interfering with the reliability of our memory.
• Persistence : repeated memories can also cause a modification in their content insofar as they have been remembered many times.

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

Forgetfulness persists in conditions such as some anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder or dissociative disorders, so 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 the Law of Just :