Introduction
Memory is a psychological process that involves more than just remembering important facts. It is a perceptual process affected by a person’s beliefs, expectations, fears, and hopes, just like other senses and an individual’s sense of consciousness (Loftus & Loftus, 2019). There has been debate on whether memory is a rote retrieval or a matter of reconstruction. In rote learning, memory is obtained through repetition and is usually stored in short-term memory.
On the other hand, memory as an aspect of reconstruction has been supported by a series of theories. Reconstructive memory is assembling information from stored knowledge without a cohesive recall of certain occurrences (Anderson, 2018). For instance, an interviewer may assist a crime victim in recalling painful experiences. Therefore, memory is mainly a matter of reconstruction because schemas or cues influence remembering.
Cue-Dependent Forgetting
Cue-dependent forgetting or retrieval is among the psychological theories that show memory is reconstructed. The theory suggests that memory can be retrieved depending on appropriate cues that remind an individual of the original event (Haase & Thim, 2019). This indicates that if an individual is given a schema based on memory, they are more likely to retrieve or remember it when needed. Cue-dependent forgetting is the inability of an individual to recall a memory due to a missing cue that existed at the time the memory was encoded (Haase & Thim, 2019). For example, a student would sometimes forget what they studied in the classroom because the conditions did not resemble an examination. Therefore, the memory may be inaccessible because there are insufficient or the right cues to bring it back.
One crucial component of the cue-dependent memory theory is that retrieving a memory depends on retrieving and encoding information, not just one or the other. It is like the relationship between a lock and a key: neither can work on its own (Zhao et al., 2019). However, when they work together, they can do what they were meant to do. Based on this, retrieving a memory depends a lot on the information encoded to make sure that the cue present can make the mind remember the original information. Furthermore, Zhao et al. (2019) showed that retrieval scores increase when the cues match the information encoded and the cues for retrieval. As a result, for an individual to effectively remember something, there has to be retrieving and encoding information.
Tulving Theory
There is a relationship between Tulving’s beliefs in semantic memory and reconstructive memory. According to the Tulving theory, individuals’ memories contain semantic stores, which are very similar to schemas and are the locations where people keep their grasp of the many laws and relationships in the world (Loftus & Loftus, 2019). Therefore, the notion that memory is nothing more than a reconstruction can be shown to be correct by the principles that Tulving presented. Additionally, because schemas influence how an individual rebuilds their memories, the experiences a person has, play a significant role in the degree to which they can remember information.
Tulving’s theory is the key to understanding cognitive psychology, especially regarding memory and how we think about and process information. Psychologists’ tests on people with a certain level of brain damage have shown that memory is largely reconstructive instead of a replay system (Loftus & Loftus, 2019). However, most of them cannot remember how, where, or when they took these lessons. The memory trace and the retrieval cue are the two things that help bring back a memory. In addition, a memory trace is information stored in a person’s brain because they first experienced an event. As a result, a retrieval cue is an information in a person’s mind at the time of retrieval.
Tulving’s encoding specificity principle theory demonstrates how cognitive psychology guides behavior, thinking, and memory retrieval. This discipline of psychology aims to improve a person’s ability to pay attention, recall past events, solve problems, process languages, observe, and reason (Loftus & Loftus, 2019). As a result, it studies how humans perceive, retain, learns, and comprehend information. The four cognitive thought processes are perception, learning and memory storage, retrieval, and reasoning. Therefore, memory retrieval is a critical component of the cognitive process, further defined by the information processing theories and the encoding specialization concept assumption.
The Information Processing Theory
The information processing theory perceives the mind as where people process the information they get. The theory states that individuals process information during an episode, then store it in their long-term memory (Kmetz, 2018). After that, the conscious mind will always be able to remember this information. Encoding is the process of ensuring that the cues that help an individual remember to match with the specific information stored. This shows that the retrieval process will only work if the information encoded information matches the retrieval cues (Kmetz, 2018). However, if it does not, the memory will be lost at that time. The cue does not have to match all of the features of the encoded information; instead, it only needs to match a part of it in the environment.
Many psychologists believe there is a strong link between the depth of the information processed and the elaboration of the memory trace, which acts as a path to the memory when the right cue is present. With the help of complex information processing, it is easy to connect the memory trace to a large network of other similar traces of the same information (Kmetz, 2018). This makes it more likely that the cue and the encoded information will overlap. In addition, retrieving a memory involves how external and internal cues interact with the stored or encoded memory traces. This gives a very convincing explanation of how memory retrieval works, which is something that has been observed.
The Misinformation Paradigm
Misinformation’s effect demonstrates how simple it is to modify memories. It also makes people wonder how reliable memories are, especially when the memories of eyewitnesses are used to decide if a criminal is guilty or not (Abbasi & Hemmati, 2022). One reason is that the memory mixes up the original information and the false information that came after the crime. Another possibility is that false information erases the memory of what happened in the first place. Additionally, researchers think the false information is easier to remember because it is more recent. In other cases, the important details of the original event might not have been remembered. Thus, misleading information is added to the mental story to fill in the gaps.
The experiments on the misinformation effect have shown that memories of an event are not frozen in time the same way that the event itself. Instead, information that comes after an event can change how people remember them (Abbasi & Hemmati, 2022). When an individual tries to figure something out later, it is better if they have information that is consistent and not confusing. In addition, when people try to determine what happened in the past, they use the available information and tools. This means that the reported memory may include facts that were not part of the event but were added to it later. In practice, if people ask suggestive questions or put wrong information into questions they ask witnesses after the event, the witnesses’ memories and testimony may be tainted.
Schema Theory
The idea of schemas is one of the main theories to have emerged from Bartlett’s work. It is thought to help individuals understand how things work as they happen and help them remember how things work (Anderson, 2018). Reconstructive theories of memory show that schemas affect people’s ability to remember events in two ways. They make it easier to remember actions that do not fit with the schema. This is because it takes more work to fit these actions into the schema at the study time. Additionally, schemas can make us remember things that did not happen because they fill in the gaps. If an individual fails to remember what happened in an event, the schema tells them the expected default value.
However, rote retrieval or replay depends on the information stored in the brain after a series of repetitions. Replay is a matter of repeating them enough times until people remember them (Loftus & Loftus, 2019). It helps individuals encode, group, and locate information later when required. Memory and learning go hand in hand, which is important in schools and all other parts of life. In addition, the relationship between learning and memory is important because it helps people understand the information and grow. However, memorized concepts are not understood, and no effort is made to figure out what they mean. In memory as a reconstruction, learning is stored in long-term memory, while in rote learning, information is stored in short-term memory.
Conclusion
Human brain theories have proved that memory is primarily a matter of reconstruction because it is influenced by schemas or cues. Reconstruction in memory is the concept that remembering things is not like watching a video of a scene over and over again. On the contrary, remembering things is more like trying to piece together past events. Although reconstruction can be very accurate, the processes that do it can also make mistakes when retrieving the data. The main proof that memory is reconstructive is that it makes systematic mistakes. Therefore, to remember things, an individual must ensure that the information is linked to their environment.
References
Abbasi, M., & Hemmati, A. (2022). The effects of mood induction and situational-emotional load on false memory based on misinformation paradigm with emphasis on controlling emotional bias, attention, working memory and emotional factors. Shenakht Journal of Psychology and Psychiatry, 9(4), 153-169. Web.
Anderson, R. C. (2018). Theoretical models and processes of literacy. Routledge.
Haase, J., & Thim, C. (2019). An approach to model forgetting. AIS Transactions on Enterprise Systems, 4(1).
Kmetz, J. L. (2018). The Information Processing Theory of Organization: Managing technology accession in complex systems. Routledge.
Loftus, G. R., & Loftus, E. F. (2019). Human memory: The processing of information. Psychology Press.
Zhao, B., Sun, J., Zhang, X., Mo, H., Niu, Y., Li, Q., Wang, L. & Zhong, Y. (2019). Long-term memory is formed immediately without the need for protein synthesis-dependent consolidation in Drosophila. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1-11. Web.