The famous Ebbinghaus forgetting curve:
A) shows that long-term potentiation failure is the primary cause of forgetting.
B) demonstrates that much of what we forget is lost relatively soon after we originally learn the information.
C) demonstrates that encoding failure is the primary reason we forget most information.
D) shows that the "magical number" of items that can be held in short-term memory is four, plus or minus one, and not seven plus or minus two, as had been believed.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve shows that much of what we forget is lost relatively soon after we originally learn the information. This suggests that there is a decay of memory over time, with memories becoming weaker and more easily forgotten as time passes. It does not address long-term potentiation or encoding failure specifically, nor does it address the capacity of short-term memory.

The Famous Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve