Editing Forgetting (section)

==History==
One of the first to study the mechanisms of forgetting was the German psychologist [[Hermann Ebbinghaus]] (1885). Using himself as the sole subject in his experiment, he memorized lists of three letter nonsense syllable words&mdash;two consonants and one vowel in the middle. He then measured his own capacity to relearn a given list of words after a variety of given time period. He found that forgetting occurs in a systematic manner, beginning rapidly and then leveling off.<ref name=":0">{{cite news |last1=Kohn |first1=Art |title=Use It or Lose It |url=https://www.td.org/magazines/td-magazine/use-it-or-lose-it |work=TD |date=9 February 2015 }}</ref> Although his methods were primitive, his basic premises have held true today and have been reaffirmed by more methodologically sound methods.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Murre |first1=Jaap M. J. |last2=Dros |first2=Joeri |title=Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve |journal=PLOS ONE |date=6 July 2015 |volume=10 |issue=7 |pages=e0120644 |doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0120644 |pmid=26148023 |pmc=4492928 |bibcode=2015PLoSO..1020644M |doi-access=free }}</ref> The Ebbinghaus ''forgetting curve'' is the name of his results which he plotted out and made 2 conclusions. The first being that much of what we forget is lost soon after it is originally learned. The second being that the amount of forgetting eventually levels off.<ref>Hockenbury, Sandra. (2010)</ref>

Around the same time Ebbinghaus developed the forgetting curve, psychologist Sigmund Freud theorized that people intentionally forgot things in order to push bad thoughts and feelings deep into their unconscious, a process he called "[[Psychological repression|repression]]".<ref>{{cite web|title=Memory: Forgetting|url=http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/memory/section3.rhtml|publisher=Spark Notes|access-date=2 May 2014}}</ref>
There is debate as to whether (or how often) memory repression really occurs<ref name=McNally2004>{{cite journal | author = McNally, R.J. | year = 2004 | title = The Science and Folklore of Traumatic Amnesia | journal = Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice | volume = 11 | issue = 1 | pages = 29–33 | doi = 10.1093/clipsy/bph056}}</ref> and mainstream psychology holds that true memory repression occurs only very rarely.<ref>
{{cite web
|url=http://www.caic.org.au/fms-sra/rmt.htm
|title=Repressed Memories and Recovered Memory Therapy
|publisher=Jan Groenveld
|access-date=<!--November 2008-->
}}
</ref>

One process model for memory was proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in the 1960s as a way to explain the operation of memory. This [[Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model|modal model of memory]], also known as the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory, suggests there are three types of memory: [[sensory memory]], [[short-term memory]], and [[long-term memory]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Malmberg |first1=Kenneth J. |last2=Raaijmakers |first2=Jeroen G. W. |last3=Shiffrin |first3=Richard M. |title=50 years of research sparked by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) |journal=Memory & Cognition |date=28 January 2019 |volume=47 |issue=4 |pages=561–574 |doi=10.3758/s13421-019-00896-7|pmid=30689198 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Each type of memory is separate in its capacity and duration. In the modal model, how quickly information is forgotten is related to the type of memory where that information is stored. Information in the first stage, sensory memory, is forgotten after only a few seconds. In the second stage, short-term memory, information is forgotten after about 20 years. While information in long-term memory can be remembered for minutes or even decades, it may be forgotten when the retrieval processes for that information fail.<ref name=":0" />

Concerning unwanted memories, modern terminology divides [[motivated forgetting]] into unconscious repression (which is disputed) and conscious [[thought suppression]].