Forgetting The Presidents Summary

In “Forgetting the Presidents” by H. L. Roediger and K. A. DeSoto, the article examines how U.S. presidents are forgotten from our collective memory. To begin with, the article gives an overview on collective memory (long term memory) and states that their focus is on historical forgetting. The main question of the study asks “What is the rate at which samples of U.S. citizens forget the presidents over time?” Furthermore, the article claims that the experiment conducted determines the rate at which presidents are forgotten from the collective memory. Using data from college students and a wider sample of Americans, the experimenters measured how well someone could remember presidents using an “ordinal position recall and free recall criteria.”

Advancements on what we know about the primacy effect and the recency effect are shown by the inability of most people to recall presidents who were in the middle of the list. The first and last eight to nine presidents were significantly recalled at higher rates than any others. These results better our knowledge on how items are forgotten over time. In addition, results displayed that pre-recency presidents were commonly remembered by the generations of college students in the first study as well as adults in the second study. President Lincoln and his immediate successors were remembered in their correct numbered position at a higher rate than others suggesting that presidents who are significant to our history are better recalled among generations. This strengthens the theory that forgetting depends on environmental demands and the need to learn and preserve information that helps us in our environment causes us to forget what is not important in our society/setting. This theory however does not explain why John Adams, the second president of the United States, is remembered in his ordinal position more often than Thomas Jefferson who is arguably more historically