Mind Mapping: Harnessing The Power Of Forgetting
To forget is to learn
We commonly and falsely believed that if we reread the text enough times, it will get engraved into our memory, and having a great memory is what measured learning. In fact, we gained familiarity with the text we reread in short succession is not learning but the illusion of knowing.
As scientists worked hard to crack the code of our mystical memory power, it is evident that forgetting is a natural phenomenon that most of us have no power to interfere with. Psychologists such as Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel suggested that self-testing is a better strategy than rereading text in enhancing memory.
Self-testing involved active retrieval where a student would retrieve the content from his memory, which requires effort, but there is no guarantee that one would successfully retrieve the memory. A failed attempt in retrieving the memory is commonly recognised as “forget”. In their book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, the authors pointed out that the process of forgetting and effortful retrieval leads to reconsolidation. Reconsolidation allows us to update our memory because every attempt in retrieving memory altered the way information is stored in memory.
