Last weekend I went to cut my grass but could not find my “grass cutting shoes.” I looked in a few spots that made sense, but couldn’t find them. Later while in the laundry room, I spotted my shoes under the laundry hamper and had a vivid recollection of putting them there the previous week. My question is why couldn’t I recall that memory earlier when I was looking for the shoes?
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Depends. How old are you? Given that this incident wasn’t due to some age-related decline or other disease, there could have been a number of issues that lead to retrieval failure. There could have been an encoding error wherein the trigger for that particular memory was lost or not properly wired, so to speak. It’s the same concept that underlies primed vs spontaneous retrieval — think: multiple choice vs fill in the blank. One type of retrieval processes is much “easier” to do, granted robust enough triggers are established and presented. However, it takes some amount of effort and attention to encode information properly. If you’re not paying attention or you don’t make much effort in rehearsal (practice makes perfect), then it will be more difficult to retrieve certain information at will. On the other hand, there may have been a consolidation failure due to you having performed the same action enough times such that your brain consolidates or compresses data (“like with like,” if you will) in order to discard redundant information. Too much information slows down processing and processing capacity decreases after a certain age, with accelerated rates of decline being considered pathological. As far as what might’ve happened in your case specifically, it’s hard to say given the limited amount of information you provided but hopefully this has offered some insight.
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