Research confirms the findings of the 19th century psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, which describe a predictable rate of forgetting after learning something new. The so-called Ebbinghaus curve maps a person’s decline of memory retention after learning new information.
While the absolute percentages can vary by individual and the circumstances of how something was learned, the forgetting curve follows the form: You can remember about 60% of memorized items the same day, 33% after a day, 25% after a week, and 20% after a month.
Watch the video version of this enFact here.
Check out our enFact describing how the brain uses “chunking” to make forming memories more effective.