Page 33 - Personality Development_Neat

a. Proactive inhibition:

If the earlier learning interferes with later learning and inhibits recall of new

material, it is known as proactive inhibition. This usually happens when the previous
learning is better than the present one. For example, we meet somebody in a party
yesterday, today while remembering those names we recall the names of people we met
last week.

b. Retroactive inhibition:

Inhibition of the earlier learning and recall by later learning is known as
retroactive inhibition. For example, a student learnt about motivation in psychology last
week, this week he learns about perception. Now he tries to recall information about
motivation but the points pertaining to perception will come to his memory.

3. Retrieval Problems:

Retrieval is necessary for recall. Some retrieval cues and reconstructive processes
help in this process. These retrieval cues or remainders, direct the memory search. This
leads to forgetting.

4. Motivated Forgetting:

This is a kind of forgetting in which the individual intentionally forgets. However,
the information stored can be retrieved and brought back to memory, but the individual
does not want those memories. So he will repress them. It may be observed that generally
people remember pleasant experiences than unpleasant ones.

5. Amnesia:

The term amnesia refers to loss of memory. It is a kind of memory disorder which

occurs from a loss of what has already been stored. There are two kinds of amnesia.

i. Psychological amnesia:

This kind of amnesia takes place as a result of major disturbances in the process of
encoding, storage and retrieval. There are different kinds of psychological amnesia:

a. Childhood amnesia:

This may be caused due to the inability to retrieve childhood memories which are
unpleasant. These memories may cause feelings of guilt, hence they are repressed.

Another reason may be due to differences in the ways of encoding. During childhood

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