Trying to remember information can be a tricky situation, mainly because of one issue that we like to call Retrieval Problems. Two categories that can split from Retrieval Problems are Proactive and Retroactive memory. Proactive memory is when something from the past is blocking a more recent event that you are trying to remember, and Retroactive memory is essentially the opposite, when a more recent event blocks a past event.

With proactive memory, we remember past events when we are trying to recall a more recent event. I had this happen to me recently when I was trying to think of which NFL Football team won the Super Bowl last year, the year before the recent Broncos win. I was almost positive that the Giants had won the Super Bowl in 2013 when it was actually the Ravens. The Giants had won the game the year before the Ravens, and that was the game that I was replacing the more recent game with. I had replaced the past super bowl winner with the more present super bowl winner.

The opposite situation happened when I was trying to think of the day that my friends came home for Winter Break. Two of my friends go to West Virginia University, and a couple of days after we got home for spring break we were comparing the time that our two different schools were off for break. I was convinced that they had way more time on break then we did, because I had the dates wrong. I thought that they had come home for winter break on the 7^th of December, when they had actually gotten off on the 17^th of December, but the 7^th is when they got off for spring break more recently. I had replaced the past break day of the month with the new break day of the month.

Sometimes it helps to put several different heads together to make sure you don’t have any retrieval problems interfering with you. That helped for me when comparing school break dates with my friends and when talking about super bowl past winners. You never know when one of these retrieval issues is going to sneak up on you so it is always good to check!