Introduction
Memory is defined as the multitude of abilities and capacities which human beings depend on to perform various life functions. This implies that the concept of memory is important in people regarding the way they remember life experiences hence every challenge that presents itself in understanding the functioning of the brain needs to be researched, and credible findings generated to improve the performance of human memory. Many people still wonder about the operation of the human brain and memory regarding the various functions performed and the way it influences forgetfulness among individuals. While other researchers have viewed the human memory as reproductive, others have the view that the human memory is reconstructive hence capable of sustaining various life processes that call for the use of memory.
Memory, in this case, could be divided into various components that include sensory, short term, and long term memories in explaining how it relates with forgetting. Sensory memory is critical since it acts as a buffer for various stimuli received from the human senses. On the other hand, short-term memory is involved in the attention situations where the memory only lasts for a few seconds. Lastly, long-term memory focuses on procedural and declarative aspects where it aids in performing tasks that require skills and processing of all the knowledge that could be accessed or expressed symbolically in speech and writing. The relationship between recall and recognition has been a frequent topic for the study of memory such that there is a need for more evidence-based research on the forgetting aspects of the brain. Such recall and retrieval process could be used in the case of patients suffering from amnesia and who need to recover their recall capabilities. While it is evident that loss of recall and efficient retrieval of information declines with age, it is imperative to understand the factors that lead to the impairment in the way human beings remember their life experiences, mostly ones that occurred at some distant point in life. The paper, therefore, discusses the way human memory affects ability to consolidate and retrieve information on past life events, that is, how memory influences forgetfulness among individuals.
Research methods
The study entails research on the functioning of the human memory in the way it influences the ability of individuals to consolidate and retrieve information on previous life experiences. Sources for the study included journal articles from reputable psychological journals. The choice of journals was because of their ability to contribute to reliable findings that provided useful insights on the functioning of the memory and its influence on information retrieval process.
Results
The findings revealed that the human memory system comprises of the mechanisms of the brain, the information it processes as well as the underlying principles that determine the way memory functions. The fact that memory combines various real life experiences implies that it is designed in a way to improve recall or retrieval of the main events that happened recently or at a distant past. Research also revealed the fact that the human memory is multifaceted, and there are various systems of interconnections and representations which mean that it is structured to perform key life processes that entail encoding and retrieval of stored information. Memory is, therefore, the general ability of individuals to interpret the perceptual world and organize responses in ways that make it possible to respond to the changes that take place in their world.
However, it is the incorporation of stimuli into memory that makes it possible for human beings to develop effective ways through which they could recall previous events and translate them in ways that enhance meaningful retrieval of such information. In the past years, there has been a major focus on the need to study the human brain regarding recall and recognition processes and how it impact on the way people forget key life processes. The structure and organization of the brain are therefore a central topic for many researchers who view the need to understand the differences that exist between recall and recognition and ways through which such differences could generate valid conclusions on how human memory functions to prevent forgetfulness.
The recall is more difficult that recognition since the former requires existing reinstatement of the learning process which implies that an individual has to remember the occurrences at a given incidence. Amnesic patients are critical in arriving at the conclusion that recall is difficult that recognition. Recall and recognition memories depend on a declarative memory such that they have a close link. While recall process is concerned with the ability to evaluate the memory and retrieve items, the recognition aspect is concerned with deciding whether items are familiar or not. Memory loss caused by occurrences before a brain injury is called retrograde amnesia, and the loss of the ability to create new memories for events after brain injury is called anterograde amnesia. There are deficits experienced by amnesic patients who create the need to engage in ways through which information recall and retrieval aspects could be utilized if interactions are focused on achieving desirable results. Information recall and retrieval are critical to improving the ways in which researchers develop insights into the functioning of a standard memory and the way the brain structure is critical in the promotion of efficient operation of the brain.
Memory is important because it defines the explicit or implicit recall of information that in current use or was used in the past. This implies that an understanding of the human memory provides a reliable mechanism for which researchers could be able to identify approaches to take in case of need for correctional interventions in the human brains like concerning amnesic patients. The human memory, in this case, functions as a system that is divided based on the duration of retention of the current and past events and how such information could be retrieved. Information recall and retrieval aspects could be categorized into long-term memory that is categorized into declarative and non-declarative elements.
Declarative memory is concerned with the ability to remember consciously facts, events, and perceptions that influence daily life process. On the other hand, non-declarative memory requires the recall of information concerned with procedures involved in life processes. The ability to recall factual events is a major concern among older adults who are mainly faced with semantic problems and hence require the interventions of medical practitioners top restore their recall and information retrieval abilities. However, since recall and retrieval entail accumulation of information for longer periods of time, semantic memory in humans is considered to be among the most stable in the human memory. Research findings have revealed that declarative memory shows a very little decline with the usual aging of people since people experience some gradual decreases in their declarative memory when in their seventies or eighties. Apart from semantic memory, there is the episodic memory that also assists in the recall process involving elements of what, where and when events occurred.
However, since both semantic and episodic memories are participating in the recollection process, it is imperative to note that they interact in making individuals recall clearly events experienced either recently or in a distant past. Episodic memory, in this case, utilizes the events in the semantic memory to form time-based events. However, while semantic memory remains stable until at late stages of a human life, the episodic memory is believed to decline considerably with age such that older people have much difficulties recalling events than the younger ones. With episodic memory, it is possible to test the recalling capabilities of an individual where they are exposed to a story and required to recall after a delayed period. Episodic memory, therefore, entails encoding, storage, and retrieval of the stored information. It is, therefore, the ability of human beings to perform the three functions that prompt researchers to explore the mechanisms and logic behind the functioning of the human brain and how damages to the structure limit the successful utilization of various recalling components. Research suggests that the ability to encode, store and retrieve information varies with age such that older people are in a lesser position to successfully recall the events that happened previously. The limited ability to process study stimuli interferes with older person’s ability to remember events. Moreover, older people have lesser capacity to acquire new information hence indicating that there are difficulties in their recall process. When stimulated with recognition capabilities, older people still are disadvantaged compared to the younger populations.
Discussion
Working memory storage capacity is important in determining the capacity of human beings to retrieve essential information on past events. However, such working capacity could only be achieved in the event where it is possible to hold information as it is processed.
There is a great difference between the way older and younger people retrieve information since the former have difficulties in the retrieval process due to their aging. The ability to remember places, people and various things encountered in the course of life is, therefore, a major function of human memory, but that capacity is more in the younger populations. The recall limit is necessary since it is responsible for measuring the working memory of individuals in efforts to improve mental tasks performed by individuals. Such mental tasks include; language proficiency, problem-solving capabilities and the way people plan their daily activities. It is the working memory capacity that predicts differences in intellectual abilities between people from different age groups and the changes that take place in the course of life as well as how the changes impact on the ability of individuals to remember key events.
Memory is dependent on various sets of processes that define the way information is encoded, stored and retrieved such that memory becomes essential in the functioning of human beings. Without memory, people would not be in the position to experience and plan their events in a way to enable them to achieve their goals and objectives in life. Memory influences personality traits of individuals such that they are reflected in the decisions they make. Long term memory is a major component of the brain that affects the way information is acquired and how such information is consolidated in ways that it could be recalled and retrieved in the future. This implies that memory is important since it makes it possible to use the past in the present undertakings. Declarative memory is necessary for the way it influences how individuals draw on their knowledge of events experience over time and recall the useful details required in making decisions.
Memory is critical to influencing the way people try to recollect details of what occurred at a given time place and time. There are however many complexities in the process of retrieving or recalling information on past events such that it is good to identify all the interactions that occur within the working memory. The encoding retrieval interactions provide an excellent framework through which remembering of key events in enhanced. At the initial stages of stimuli perception, the sensory memory functions in ways that associate the senses with parts of the brain. Stimuli that are not sensed are not processed hence cannot be used to draw a conclusion on the past events. This implies that only stimuli that are consciously perceived have the capacity to be stored in the human memory. However, it is the transfer of information along the working memory that is of importance since the human memory is like a hub for all information related to life experiences of individuals. However, there are also findings that the way information is stored affect its reliability in future. This means that information has to be stored in ways that prevent decay as it moves from one stage to the other. Attention which is higher in younger populations is required to ensure that information processing is useful and that individuals have a greater capacity to recall the events. Attention, in this case, implies that one can focus on various sensory stimuli and use it to transfer information successfully from their working memory. The other important factors to consider is the way to rely on short-term working memory to ensure new information is taken in the best way possible while the existing one is also actively processed in ways that improve the recall process. The limited capacity of short-term memory and the fact that information that is not rehearsed could be lost within seconds further prove that older people are in a lesser position to quickly create stimuli that contribute to the faster processing of information.
Research findings suggest the need for maintenance of the memory such that it is easier to keep information for long before it is processed. However, such maintenance process is only useful in the short-term hence limits successful retrieval of information when it comes to information on events that happened in a distant past. Long term memory is, however, the most desirable means of consolidating information on past events. This is because long-term memory harbors all historical conceptions, knowledge and critical information learned by individuals. This implies that long-term memory is a kind of permanent data storage structure that could be used and individual decides to fetch it back into consciousness. The low efficiency among older people to carry information stored for an extended period of consciousness is explained by the fact that information processing and retrieval declines with the aging process such that the young populations have the advantage of quickly fetching the information. However, research has also revealed that long-term memory cannot work in isolations but requires constant communication with short term memory for effective retrieval of information. There are questions on the number of units that are in the human brain, but the most important thing is to understand ways through which information is stored and retrieved. Cognitive psychologists today believe that there exist multiple kinds of information kept in the in long-term memory. Each memory structure is unique and plays a different operational function of its own. However, it has been evidenced that there exist a certain degree of specialized categorization system in the human mind which should be key in determine the way individuals are able to remember key life events. Understanding the way the human memory functions is, therefore, the key to generating reliable findings on the factors that need to be taken into consideration to influence long-term memory of individuals.
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