We all forget things from time to time. It’s even normal to experience forgetfulness under certain circumstances and at various times in our lives. And we do become somewhat more forgetful as we get older. Another thing that’s normal is to worry about your forgetfulness. But when does forgetfulness become abnormal? Here is a list of memory problems that shouldn’t cause too much worry. They may worsen with age, but they do not suggest Alzheimer’s unless they’re very severe.
Absentmindedness
If you frequently forget where you put your car keys or your glasses, you’re absentminded. This occurs because you were thinking about something else. Your mind was focusing elsewhere on something it deemed more important. Because of that, you did not encode the information properly.Absentmindedness can also cause you to forget certain activities that need to be done at a certain time or schedule. The result? Missed appointments, missed dinners…
Transience
This is when you tend to forget about particular events and facts. It happens when an item doesn’t have a strong enough emotional impact to be comprehensively retained.
Many people view this as a sign of poor memory skills. However, some brain scientists consider transience beneficial. Forgetting certain facts and events may mean clearing the brain of unused memories making space for newer and more useful information. That means that memory issues related to transience may not really be a problem. Of course, if the amount and seriousness of things forgotten affects your wellbeing or quality of life, there is a problem and outside help should be sought.
Suggestibility
An eye witness to a crime relates that the murderer is a blonde haired man. The next day they hear on the news that the crime was committed by a dark haired man. The eye witness may then start to recall and create images in their mind about particular aspects of the crime with the brown haired man.
This happens because there are times when your memory becomes vulnerable to the power of suggestion. Information you learn after the fact becomes incorporated into your memory of the incident. This is also the reason why people can recall certain incidents in their childhood, that in reality never took place.
Blocking
Have you ever tried to name someone or something you know, but found yourself unable to remember who or what it was? You knew that you knew the answer. It was “right on the tip of your tongue”. That’s an example of “blocking” — the inability to recall or retrieve certain information that you previously knew well. Although the information was properly stored in the brain something keeps you from recalling it.You may even find yourself retrieving wrong information that’s somehow related to what you really want to recall. You feel that this wrong information you are able to retrieve is competing with your ability to recall the correct one. For example, you may call one child by another’s name.
Bias
Many people mistakenly believe that their memory is able to accurately record what they perceive and experience like an infallible recording. What they don’t realize is that memory and the ability to record information can be affected by their belief, mood and prior knowledge. This ‘filtering’ explains why a depressed individual recalls many sad and negative thoughts more readily than happy and positive events.
Misattribution
This memory problem manifests when you recall only a portion of certain information, or when you improperly link memories. For example, you may accurately recall the name of the person you meet inside the store but fail to remember where you met them in the past. You may even mistakenly identify them person as “John, the guy I used to work with in Boston” but later realize that John was your neighbor when you lived in Boston. Misattribution is more common in older people. This may be partly due to some decline in the ability to remember, but remember that older people have had to recall a lot more over a longer period of time than a younger person. Not only do they have to filter through many more memories, more time may have passed since the memory was stored. That makes accurate recollections more difficult.If you notice your loved one having troubling trends in memory lapses, or a friend is having sudden changes in their ability to recall things, encourage them to visit a health professional. Only an expert can tell whether someone is suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s and/or other general and mental health problems. Whether it is one of these issues, or something more relatively minor, the sooner the diagnosis the better the prognosis.
Persistence
Many of us worry about forgetting things, but for some people they would like nothing better than to forget. Persistence is a memory problem where traumatic events, fears and negative feelings cannot be forgotten. Sometimes these memories are accurate, but they may instead be negative distortions of what really happened. Those with depression are particularly prone to this, as are people with post traumatic stress disorder.
