Decay Theory of Forgetting

Question	Answer
Ebbinghaus	Learned non-sense syllables, found that most forgetting happened straight after learning
Brown Peterson Task	When people are prevented from rehearsal information is lost very quickly, performance drops more then 50% in 6 seconds
Waugh and Norman	16 Digits read out at either 1 or 4 per second. If decay is the reason for forgetting the 16 second list should cause more forgetting however there was no significant difference between the two
Long Term Decay	The law of disuse - Bjork and Bjork, Memory traces compete for access to retrieval paths, regularly retrievement strengthens the path Ebbinghaus
Evaluation	Very little evidence, Difficult to study as time between learning and recall needs to be controlled Solso - No evidence for neurological decay Lacks Ecological validity

Resource summary

	Created by Adam O'Rourke over 11 years ago