Failure of Memory Recall

Failure of Memory Recall

Abdul has completed his first psychology quiz and is completely perplexed as to why he was the only student that failed. Abdul is adamant that he was very well prepared, as read all the quiz material “over and over” the night prior. Lets examine the role that memory has played, in Abduls failure.

Encoding is the first stage in the memory process, followed by storage and retrieval, involving processes associated with receiving or briefly registering stimuli through one or more of the senses and modifying that information; a decay process or loss of this information (a type of forgetting) occurs rapidly unless the next two stages, storage and retrieval, are activated (Farfax Dictionary)

One determinant of how well memories are recalled is the way in which material is perceived, processed and understood. The levels-of-processing theory suggests that the volume of information that is initially processed is critical in determining how much of the information is ultimately remembered (Feldman & Dinardo 2012).

Several processes typically account for memory failure, including decay, interference (both proactive and retroactive) and cue-dependent forgetting. Since this is Abdul’s first psychology test, it is unlikely that he has experienced proactive interference since this occurs when information that was learned earlier disrupts the recall of newer material (Feldman & Dinardo 2012). Retroactive interference is more likely to apply to Abdul, as this refers to the difficulty encountered in the recall of memory due to later exposure to different material. This could refer to the time lapse Abdul experienced between reading the information the night before and then only writing the test the following day, without briefly recapping the morning of.

It is very apparent that Abdul merely read the information “over and over”, without mentally absorbing the material at the deepest processing level. In order for Abdul to remember the...