Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Search research articles

Related Experiment Videos

On forgetting the historical past

¹Utrecht University Research Institute for Language and Speech (UiLOTS), The Netherlands. thijs.pollmann@let.ruu.nl

Memory & Cognition

|May 19, 1998

Summary

Newspaper data reveal universal "forgetting curves" for time perception, independent of language or culture. Memory recall decreases with temporal distance, suggesting a cognitive basis for how we perceive time.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

The language user as an arithmetician.

Cognition·1996

Same author

[Invasive pulmonary monitoring in acute necrotizing pancreatitis. A decision aid for indications for surgery?].

Zentralblatt fur Chirurgie·1989

See all related articles

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Linguistics
Sociology

Background:

Understanding how humans perceive and remember time is crucial for cognitive science.
Previous research on time perception has often focused on individual or small-group psychological experiments.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the relationship between the temporal distance of events and their recall frequency in public discourse.
To determine if patterns of memory recall related to time are universal across different languages and cultures.

Main Methods:

Analysis of citation frequencies of specific calendar years in newspaper texts across various languages and time periods.
Plotting time series data to identify patterns in year recall.

Main Results:

A consistent pattern, termed a "forgetting curve," emerged, showing citation frequency inversely proportional to the temporal distance from the publication year.
These forgetting curves were remarkably similar across different languages, cultures, and publication years, indicating a universal phenomenon.

Conclusions:

The findings suggest that human memory recall of past events follows predictable "forgetting curves" that are independent of linguistic or cultural context.
The observed patterns may be explained by a "cognitive distance" between past and present, influencing how readily information is accessed and recalled.

Related Experiment Videos