Forgetting in short term memory: the effect of time

Abstract

Forgetting in short-term memory has been studied extensively and yet no consensus has emerged to explain its cause. Two theories continue to provide competing explanations of forgetting in short-term memory: decay and interference. Decay presupposes that the memory trace for a set of stimuli to be remembered weakens in proportion to the amount of time that passes whereas interference posits one stimulus interacting with another as the cause of forgetting. Recent evidence has suggested that decay should no longer be considered a viable mechanism to explain forgetting; but the current set of studies provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Hence these studies argue that decay should not be abandoned.