<P> There are several different types of memory errors, in which people may inaccurately recall details of events that did not occur, or they may simply misattribute the source of a memory . In other instances, imagination of a certain event can create confidence that such an event actually occurred . Causes of such memory errors may be due to certain cognitive factors, such as spreading activation, or to physiological factors, including brain damage, age or emotional factors . Furthermore, memory errors have been reported in individuals with schizophrenia and depression . The consequences of memory errors can have significant implications . Two main areas of concern regarding memory errors are in eyewitness testimony and cases of child abuse . </P> <P> The feeling that a person gets when they know the information, but cannot remember a specific detail, like an individuals name or the name of a place is described as the "tip - of - the - tongue" experience. The tip - of - the - tongue experience is a classic example of blocking, which is a failure to retrieve information that is available in memory even though you are trying to produce it . The information you are trying to remember has been encoded and stored, and a cue is available that would usually trigger its recollection . The information has not faded from memory and a person is not forgetting to retrieve the information . What a person is experiencing is a complete retrieval failure, which makes blocking especially frustrating . Blocking occurs especially often for the names of people and places, because their links to related concepts and knowledge are weaker than for common names . The experience of blocking occurs more often as we get older; this "tip of the tongue" experience is a common complaint amongst 60 - and 70 - year - olds . </P> <P> Transience refers to forgetting what occurs with the passage of time . Transience occurs during the storage phase of memory, after an experience has been encoded and before it is retrieved . As time passes, the quality of our memory also changes, deteriorating from specific to more general . German philosopher named Hermann Ebbinghaus decided to measure his own memory for lists of nonsense syllables at various times after studying them . He decided to draw out a curve of his forgetting pattern over time . He realized that there is a rapid drop - off in retention during the first tests and there is a slower rate of forgetting later on . Therefore, transience denotes the gradual change of a specific knowledge or idea into more general memories . </P> <P> Absentmindedness is a gap in attention which causes memory failure . In this situation the information does not disappear from memory, it can later be recalled . But the lack of attention at a specific moment prevents the information from being recalled at that specific moment . A common cause of absentmindedness is a lack of attention . Attention is vital to encoding information in long - term memory . Without proper attention, material is much less likely to be stored properly and recalled later . When attention is divided, less activity in the lower left frontal lobe diminishes the ability for elaborative memory encoding to take place, and results in absentminded forgetting . More recent research has shown that divided attention also leads to less hippocampal involvement in encoding . A common cause of absentmindedness is not being able to remember to carry out actions that had been planned to be done in the future, for example, picking up grocery items, and remembering times of meetings . </P>

Loss of memory due to the passage of time during which the memory trace is not used