A psychologist asks people to recall the name of their kindergarten teacher. Surprisingly, the majority of people correctly do this and comment, "Gee whiz, I haven't thought about that old bat [or old coot] in years!" Their ability to do so tends to conflict with which theory of forgetting?

Decay or disuse

Explanation:

A psychologist asks people to recall the name of their kindergarten teacher. Surprisingly, the majority of people correctly do this and comment, "Gee whiz, I haven't thought about that old bat [or old coot] in years!" Their ability to do so tends to conflict with which theory of forgetting?h decay or disuse

The trace decay theory of forgetting states that all memories fade automatically as a function of time; with this theory, you will need to follow a certain path, or trace, to recall a memory.

C. Decay or disuse

Explanation:

The Decay theory can be defined as the theory which states that memory can fade depending on how long such event has happened or as time passes leading the memory the person has to wears or fade away but this may depend on how strong that person memory strength to remember things and the ability to retrieve it are. Example when a new event happens or occurs to a person a memory trace is been created immediately which will make the person to remember such event but as time passes the memory may begin to fade away which may make the information to be less available for later retrieval.

Therefore disuse can as well happen when something is discontinued making the memory traces to decay as times passes due to the fact that memories fade but disuse of a trace will lead to memory decay, which will ultimately cause retrieval failure.

Therefore based on the scenario their ability to do so tends to conflict with forgetting theory of DECAY OR DISUSE