Forgetting and Other Memory Challenges Practice Test

Proactive interference: last year’s names interfere with learning and retrieving the new classmates’ names, so earlier learning disrupts later learning.

Retroactive interference: learning new classmates’ names disrupts recall of last year’s roster, so recent learning blocks older information retrieval.

Permanent erasure: the new names were never recorded into long‑term storage, so forgetting reflects a missing memory trace, not retrieval trouble.

Amygdala damage: reduced fear processing prevents encoding of names, leading to forgetting because emotional tagging is required for all memory.