Forgetting, Memory Errors, and Eyewitness Issues Study Pack

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Last updated May 22, 2026

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Forgetting, Memory Errors, and Eyewitness Issues Study Guide

Unpack why memory fails, distorts, and deceives with this Psychology 101 study pack covering Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, proactive and retroactive interference, and the misinformation effect. Examine Elizabeth Loftus's landmark eyewitness research alongside source monitoring errors, the cross-race effect, weapon focus, and prospective memory failures — everything you need to understand why human memory is far less reliable than it feels.

Key Takeaways

  • •Forgetting follows a predictable decay pattern described by Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, in which the sharpest memory loss occurs within the first hour after learning and levels off over time.
  • •Interference — both proactive (old memories disrupting new ones) and retroactive (new memories disrupting old ones) — is a leading cause of retrieval failure in everyday forgetting.
  • •Memory is reconstructive rather than reproductive: each time a memory is recalled, it is rebuilt from stored fragments and is vulnerable to distortion by subsequent information, a process called the misinformation effect.
  • •Elizabeth Loftus's research demonstrated that subtly leading questions (e.g., using the word 'smashed' vs. 'hit') can alter a witness's memory of an event, including the creation of entirely false memories.
  • •Eyewitness identifications are among the most persuasive but least reliable forms of evidence, with cross-race effect, weapon focus, and stress all systematically reducing accuracy.
  • •Source monitoring errors occur when a person correctly remembers information but misattributes where or how they learned it, which can cause someone to believe they witnessed something they only heard described.
  • •Prospective memory failures — forgetting to perform an intended future action — are distinct from retrospective forgetting and are associated with disruptions in routine or divided attention.

Why Memories Fade: The Mechanics of Forgetting

Forgetting is not a single process but a collection of distinct mechanisms that operate at encoding, storage, and retrieval stages of memory.

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

  • •Hermann Ebbinghaus mapped memory loss over time by testing himself on nonsense syllables, finding that roughly 50% of newly learned material is forgotten within an hour.
  • •The rate of forgetting is steepest immediately after learning and decelerates over time, producing a negatively accelerating curve.
  • •Information that is rehearsed, emotionally significant, or connected to existing knowledge decays more slowly than isolated facts.

Encoding Failure vs. Storage Decay

  • •Encoding failure occurs when information never makes it into long-term memory in the first place — for example, not noticing the design on a coin you handle daily.
  • •Storage decay (trace decay theory) proposes that memory traces weaken over time if not periodically reactivated, though evidence for pure decay independent of interference is difficult to isolate.

Retrieval Failure and Cue Dependency

  • •Many apparent forgetting episodes are actually retrieval failures: the memory exists but cannot be accessed without the right cue.
  • •The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon illustrates retrieval failure — a person knows they know a word or name but cannot produce it in the moment.
  • •Encoding specificity holds that retrieval is most successful when the conditions at recall match those present during encoding (e.g., same physical location or emotional state).

Interference: How Competing Memories Disrupt Each Other

Interference theory argues that memories compete with one another, and learning new information or retaining old information can actively suppress what we are trying to remember.

Proactive Interference

  • •Proactive interference occurs when previously learned material makes it harder to encode or recall newer material — for example, a bilingual speaker's first language intruding when trying to recall vocabulary from a recently learned third language.
  • •This type of interference tends to grow stronger as the volume of prior knowledge in a domain increases.

Retroactive Interference

  • •Retroactive interference occurs when newly acquired information disrupts the retrieval of older memories — for example, learning a new phone number makes it harder to recall a former one.
  • •Sleep after learning reduces retroactive interference because the sleeping brain is not exposed to competing new input, which helps explain why sleep consolidates memory.

Motivated Forgetting

  • •Repression, proposed by Freud, suggests that emotionally threatening memories are pushed out of conscious awareness — this claim remains contested and lacks robust experimental support.
  • •Suppression, a voluntary effort to stop thinking about a distressing memory, is better supported empirically and may, with repeated effort, reduce the ease of retrieval for unwanted memories.

About this Study Pack

Created by Kibin to help students review key concepts, prepare for exams, and study more effectively. This Study Pack was checked for accuracy and curriculum alignment using authoritative educational sources. See sources below.

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