Unustamise

Unustamise is the Estonian genitive form of unustamine, the noun for the act or process of forgetting. It derives from the verb unustama, meaning “to forget,” and is used in various phrases to discuss forgetting as a phenomenon, such as unustamise mehhanismid (mechanisms of forgetting) or unustamise protsess (the forgetting process).

In psychology, forgetting refers to the loss or inaccessibility of information that was previously encoded in memory. It can be adaptive, helping to remove outdated or irrelevant knowledge and reduce cognitive overload, or detrimental when important information becomes hard to retrieve. Forgetting is commonly explained through several mechanisms. Decay theory suggests memory traces weaken over time, though evidence for simple time-based decay is mixed. Interference theory posits that existing memories can be disrupted by new or competing information, with proactive and retroactive interference. Retrieval failure occurs when cues or context are insufficient to access stored information, a phenomenon related to cue dependency and context effects. Motivated forgetting encompasses processes such as repression or suppression, which are debated within psychology but considered in some models of forgetting.

Estonian usage notes: unustamine is the basic noun for forgetting, while unustamise forms appear in academic and clinical language to describe the causes, processes, and consequences of forgetting. In educational and cognitive research, unustamise is used to discuss how memory changes over time, how retrieval cues influence access to memory, and how forgetting interacts with learning and memory retention.