Memory and forgetting constitute two sides of the same coin, and although the first has been extensively investigated, the latter is often overlooked. A possible approach to better understand forgetting is to develop phenomenological models that implement its putative mechanisms in the most elementary way possible, and then experimentally test the theoretical predictions of these models. One such mechanism proposed in previous studies is retrograde interference, stating that a memory can be erased due to subsequently acquired memories. In the current contribution, we hypothesize that retrograde erasure is controlled by the relevant “importance” measures such that more important memories eliminate less important ones acquired earlier. We show that some versions of the resulting mathematical model are broadly compatible with the previously reported power-law forgetting time course and match well the results of our recognition experiments with long, randomly assembled streams of words.

中文翻译：

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遗忘的追溯干扰模型

记忆和遗忘是同一枚硬币的两个方面，尽管前者已被广泛研究，但后者常常被忽视。更好地理解遗忘的一种可能方法是开发以最基本的方式实现其推定机制的现象学模型，然后通过实验测试这些模型的理论预测。在先前的研究中提出的一种这样的机制是逆行干扰，指出由于随后获得的存储器可以擦除存储器。在当前的贡献中，我们假设逆行擦除是由相关的“重要性”措施控制的，以便更重要的记忆消除较早获得的次要记忆。