Construct · 1 fields · 3 citations

forgetting curve: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

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forgettingcurve1 CONSTRUCTForgetting curveEBBINGHAUS · FORGETTING

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Psychology

The roughly exponential decline of memory retention over time since learning

The German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus first charted the forgetting curve in his 1885 monograph Über das Gedächtnis (translated in 1913 as Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology), in which he learned long lists of nonsense syllables, coined so that earlier associations would not aid recall, and then measured how much he retained after delays ranging from minutes to a month. He found that retention dropped steeply in the first hours after learning and then leveled off, so that the amount forgotten follows a roughly exponential decline over time, a shape now called the forgetting curve. A 2015 replication by Murre and Dros reproduced his single-subject findings under modern controls and reported a curve of the same general form, indicating that the pattern is robust rather than an artifact of his method. The construct is a landmark because it was among the first quantitative laws of memory: it describes retention as a function of the time elapsed since learning rather than of the content learned, and it grounds later work on spaced practice and the timing of review.[1][2][3]

Unit
A retention-over-time function: the proportion recalled (or relearning savings) plotted against elapsed time since learning
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Operationalised as recall or relearning savings assessed at set delays after initial learning, then fitted to a decay function of time

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Nearby constructs

retention4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four constructsmemory6 fields · 18 citationsjingle · one name, six constructslearning6 fields · 14 citationsjingle · one name, six constructs

References

  1. Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Über das Gedächtnis: Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie. Duncker & Humblot.
  2. Ebbinghaus, H. (1913). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology (H. A. Ruger & C. E. Bussenius, Trans.). Teachers College, Columbia University. (Original work published 1885)
  3. Murre, J. M. J., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120644

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