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According to retrieval-failure theory, forgetting occurs when information is available in LTM but is not accessible. Accessibility depends in large part on retrieval cues. Forgetting is greatest when context and state are very different at encoding and retrieval. In this situation, retrieval cues are absent and the likely result is cue-dependent forgetting. When we take in new information, a certain amount of time is necessary for changes to the nervous system to take place – the consolidation process – so that it is properly recorded. During this period information is moved from short-term memory to the more permanent long-term memory. A number of experiments have indicated the importance of context-based cues for retrieval. An experiment conducted by Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) asked participants to learn lists of words belonging to different categories, for example names of animals, clothing and sports. The findings from studies using free recall are fairly reliable and they produce similar results on each occasion. If you take each item in the list and calculate the probability of participants recalling it (by averaging recall of the word over all participants) and plot this against the item’s position in the list, it results in the serial position curve (Figure 1).

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Proactive and retroactive Interference is thought to be more likely to occur where the memories are similar, for example: confusing old and new telephone numbers. Chandler (1989) stated that students who study similar subjects at the same time often experience interference. The following represent the most common yield criterion as applied to an isotropic material (uniform properties in all directions). Other equations have been proposed or are used in specialist situations.

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The maximum principal stress and strain criteria continue to be widely used in spite of severe shortcomings. The main problem experienced by HM is his inability to remember and learn new things. This inability to form new memories is referred to as anterograde amnesia. However, of interest in our understanding of the duration of the process of consolidation is HM’s memory for events before his surgery.

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Support for the view that displacement was responsible for the loss of information from short-term memory came from studies using the “free-recall” method.

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Tulving, E. and Pearlstone, Z. (1966). Availability versus accessibility of information in memory for words. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal behavior, 5(4), 381-391. There is considerable evidence that information is more likely to be retrieved from long-term memory if appropriate retrieval cues are present. This evidence comes from both laboratory experiments and everyday experience. A retrieval cue is a hint or clue that can help retrieval. Macroscopic material failure is defined in terms of load carrying capacity or energy storage capacity, equivalently. Li [2] presents a classification of macroscopic failure criteria in four categories: Trace decay theory states that forgetting occurs as a result of the automatic decay or fading of the memory trace. Trace decay theory focuses on time and the limited duration of short-term memory. The maximum strain criterion has a similar form except that the principal strains are compared with experimentally determined uniaxial strains at failure, i.e.,