Can you recall your passport number?
I bet you can’t. Simply, because it is not used every day. You will have to make a big effort to seek it out from the bottom of the stack of information that is stored in your brain. To be remembered easily, information needs to be organized and meaningful, and needs to come to us at a slow pace so as to process it.
The secret of most of annoying instances of forgetting is that you do not take the trouble to connect new information with some fact you already know. Isolated facts drop out of the memory quickly, but if you file new knowledge in relation to something already established in your mind, you will retain it and be able to refer to it whenever you need it. It is simply a matter of making special use of your power of association, which is the beginning of all learning processes.
In mental terms, the more you associate a fact with other stored information in toyr mind, the better your memory can retain it. Each of its associates becomes a hook on which the new information hangs. Association is making mental hook from which you may fish facts out of your mind, as you require them. The mental filing system will provide the mental hooks upon which to hang, or file, anything you want to remember. Certain selected words, called KEY WORDS, are the mental hooks in your filing system, Each one of these represents a vivid image.
Let us see what reasons the scientists have attributes to the habit of forgetting. The scientific theory is that people forget more at times passes. This makes sense, I can recall the dress I wore in the morning quit easily, but I take time in remembering the dress I wore yeaterday morning. And if you ask me what I was wearing last Sunday morning, I will have a little problem recalling the dress.
According to the scientist, we forget things because of certain processes. These processes are:
- ü Interference
- ü Retrieval failure
- ü Motivated Forgetting
- ü Constructive Process
