Need an research paper on how we forget. Needs to be 5 pages. Please no plagiarism.

Need an research paper on how we forget. Needs to be 5 pages. Please no plagiarism. As a starting point it seems relevant to mention that memory as a phenomenon could be divided into three main types - working, long-term and short-term memory (Wickelgren, 1972). The theory of cognitive psychology assumes that the process of forgetting is characterized by a decrease of the ability to remember things and reproduce the known information. in general, it could be described as the loss of access to the previously remembered data. Both of the chosen theories – the Trace Decay and the Interference ones – have their adherents and the issue of which theory describes the process of forgetting more relevant is still debatable.

The Interference theory

The adherents of this theory consider that the existing information in the human brain is superseded by the new one. The memory traces as they are called by the psychologists are mutually replaced on the basis of their similarity, this similarity may be phonetic semantic or visual (Wickelgren, 1972). According to the information given by the researcher Douglas Potts the interference could be divided into two types – proactive and retroactive interference. So according to this theory, there may be two ways of memorizing: original information is stronger and prevents memorizing the new one, and as a result, it is forgotten. and the opposite case when the “old” information is forgotten, being replaced (Potts, 1996 p.6). The origin of this theory belongs to psychologists Waugh and Norman (1965) and later this theory was supported by such psychology researches as Baddeley and Scott (1971).

The interference is considered to be the main reason for forgetting (Altman, Gray). As an example of this theory applied in practice, we can provide the information given in the research made by Ann Cybenko: for example, the person forgets his\her acquaintance’s name after meeting many people and their names interfered with the name of the first person (Cybenko, 2011 p.12). This experiment can be easily made within a small group of people and doesn’t need special equipment. The phenomenon of interference should not be confused with the positive transference when the previous information helps to memorize the new one. This phenomenon is observed, for example, when a driver starts to learn to drive a new car brand after changing his own car.